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Pamphlets Printed and Distributed 


by the 



of the 


Third Judicial District of the State of 
New York. 




Headquarters at Albany, N* Y. 




J905 








Pamphlets and leaflets may be obtained from the Association by 
addressing the Chairman of the Executive Committee, 

No. 9 Hall Place, Albany, N. Y. 
Gift 
Author 


INTRODUCTION. 


In July, 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lncretia Mott, Martha C. 
Wright and Ann McClintock issued an unsigned call for a conven¬ 
tion, which was “ to consider the social, civil and religious condition 
and rights of woman.” They framed a “ Declaration of Senti¬ 
ments ” for “ the inauguration of a rebellion such as the world had 
never seen before.” This “ Declaration ” travestied the Declaration 
of Independence, summing up, after many verbose statements, their 
sentiments in these words; 

“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and 
usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct 
object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” 

From that date until the year 1894 the women suffragists, acting 
in accord with the “ Declaration ” and its eighteen grievances, be- 
seiged Legislatures to give women the right of suffrage, this being 
the crux of their argument: That women had an inalienable right 
to the ballot, and were subject to taxation without representation. 

No great opposition was made to the suffrage clamor. 

Legislators treated the annual visit of the women suffragists as 
a sort of “ field day,” and the women who were opposed made no 
outward sign, resting their cause in the common sense and justice 
of the men who made the laws of the State to govern and protect 
alike male and female citizens. 

In the winter of 1893 Miss Susan B. Anthony, in an address made 
in Albany, N. Y., stated that at the Constitutional Convention, which 
was to be held in May, 1894, there would be an amendment demanded 
striking out the word “ male ” from the Constitution, thereby allow¬ 
ing women to vote; and, that in order to effect this, the women 
suffragists were going into every town, village and city of the State 
to secure the names of 1,000,000 women over 21 years of age to a 
petition for such an amendment. 

In answer to a question as to whether all women of the State 
desired the suffrage, she said: “ They do not oppose it.” 

It seemed then, to the women who had hitherto been silent, that 
this was a time when they must, of necessity, make themselves 
heard. In Massachusetts there had been for years a silent organiza¬ 
tion which worked to defeat the suffragists, and which was ready 



to take open action if the New York State women should decide 
to do likewise. In Illinois there was the same feeling. 

Brooklyn, N. Y., took the initiative, and following in line, on the 
27th of April, 1894, a meeting of women opposed to woman suffrage 
was held at the residence of Mrs. John V. L. Pruyn, 13 Elk street, 
Albany, N. Y. An organization was perfected, and the work of 
securing signatures to a protest against striking the word ‘‘ male 
from the State Constitution was undertaken. In less than a month 
more than 8,000 names of women over 21 years of age were enrolled 
upon the protest, which was presented to the Convention on June 
12th. 

It is of interest to note that the suffragists failed in their effort to 
secure 1,000,000 names to their petition, though every county in the 
State was canvassed during the year preceding the Convention, by 
women engaged for the purpose, some of whom were paid for each 
signature procured. In one town there were more names sent in 
than there were women and girls in the town. Rooms were secured 
in the Capitol, and a banner flung out: “ Come in and sign the 
1,000,000 petition.” Finally men were urged to sign, messenger 
boys getting much amusement filling up the pages, one lad signing 
“ Mike Dolan, Paris, England.” It was claimed that two labor 
organizations had sent in 250,000 names through the votes of their 
respective secretaries, and that the secretary of the W. C. T. U. had 
signed for its membership of 75,000, though many persons of each 
organization were known to be opposed to woman suffrage. * Their 
petitions as presented to the Convention were published in the daily 
press, and with the foregoing additions only reached 397,055 names. 
It is well to bear in mind that, at that time, there was a population 
of over 7,000,000 in the State. 

After full and free discussion before the committee appointed 
by President Choate, on the proposed sufferage amendment, the 
Constitutional Convention decided that: “ Until it is shown that 
woman may become a politician without losing something of the 
precious charm of her personality, and that the State may exact 
her services in that capacity without imperiling its stability and 
tranquility,” and “until the time also come when party politics 
shall be so pure that the presence of women at the polls would 
not be incongruous; and party feeling so subdued that opposi¬ 
tion from those we love could be freely tolerated by our better 
natures,” the experiment of woman suffrage should not be tried 
and so refused to submit the question to the people. 


The anti-suffragists went back to the duties laid aside for the 
while and forgot that there was an opposing faction. 

But that faction is noted for its tenacity of purpose, and so at the 
next legislative session they appeared with the amendment framed 
as a concurrent resolution of the Legislature and asked that it be 
passed. 

To defeat this the women of Albany, who had been active in 
opposition, reorganized as a permanent association, at a meeting held 
at the residence of Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, on May 14, 1895. At this 
meeting a board of officers, consisting of a president, first vice- 
president, secretary, treasurer, an executive committee of seven, 
and 100 vice-presidents were elected, with a membership classified 
as sustaining, active, and associate. The name adopted was : “ The 
Anti-Suffragists of Albany and Vicinity.” 

At a meeting held subsequently it was decided to work in unison 
with the New York and Brooklyn Associations, as an auxiliary to a 
State Organization, the field of work for Albany being the Third 
Judicial District of the State. 

But Albany did not confine her efforts to the State of New York 
alone. In unison with other associations she sent a representative 
both to the Republican National Convention held at St. Louis in 
1896, and to the Democratic National Convention held at Chicago 
the same year, to oppose the introduction of a suffrage plank in the 
National Platforms. Later the Albany Society joined in sending 
at the request of many women of the State of South Dakota and of 
the State of Washington, a representative to help the resident women 
defeat amendments to their State Constitutions which would force 
suffrage upon them. The amendments were lost in both States. 

In this way the women of the other States of the Union came to 
know of the organized opposition to woman suffrage; and, as a 
result, many requests were made for information and literature. 

Since the organization of the Albany Association 153,050 leaflets 
have been published and sent out through the energy and liberality 
of its honorary president. Thousands of personal letters have been 
written, and hundreds of letters have been published through the 
courtesy of the press. Later, a request came from the libraries 
for literature on the subject, and for that reason the honorary 
president has caused the leaflets published by the Society to be 
bound in book form and placed in libraries where the public may 
have access to them. 




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CONTENTS. 


Albany Meeting, April 27, 1894, Resolutions. . .Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn. 

Albany Meeting, May ii, 1894, Address.Hon. J. Newton Fiero. 

Albany Meeting, May 11, 1894, Address.Hon. Matthew Hale. 

Albany Meeting, May il, 1894, Address.Dr. Win. O. Stillman. 

Albany Meeting, May ii, 1894, Address.Rev. Father Walsh. 

Albany, Cons. Conv. June 14, 1894, Address.Hon. Francis M. Scott. 
Albany, Cons. Conv. June 14, 1894, Letter. .Hon.Abram S. Hewitt. 
Addresses, Extracts from. .. .Rt. Rev. Wm. Croswell Doane, D. D. 
Address, Jud. Com. Senate, Albany, April 10, 1895. 

Mrs. F. M. Scott. 

Address, Rep. Nat. Conv., St. Louis, June 16, 1896. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 

Comments, St. Louis Star. 

St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

H. B. Blackwell, St. Louis Star. 

Address, Dem. Nat. Conv., Chicago, July 8, 1896. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 

Comments, Chicago Chronicle. 

Anti-Suffragists. Many opposed to the extension of suffrage. 

As to Suffrage in New York State. .New York Sun, 1896, A. P. P.* 

A Suffrage Lesson.Albany Journal, 1897. . 

Anti-Suffrage Association Circular, 1896. 

As to Women.Seattle Times, 1898. 

A Moment with Ruskin. 

Australia, Revue des deux Mondes, 1896. Pierre Le Roy Beaulieu. 

Colorado, From the Outlook.Charlotte M. Vaile. 

Connecticut, Results of School Elections. 

Creighton’s Mrs., Appeal. 

Defeat in State of Washington.Portland Oregonian, 1898. 

Does Suffrage Work Pay?.Albany Journal, 1896. 

Do Not Want the Ballot.New York Tribune, 1896, E. S. C.* 

Depew, Chauncey M., Answered.Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 

Extracts, Wrongs and Perils of Suffrage, No. i .Rev. J. M. Buckley. 
Extracts, Wrongs and Perils of Suffrage, No. 2.Rev. J. M. Buckley. 
Gladstone on Woman Suffrage. 

Kansas.'.T. Gardiner. 














Letter to Rev. J. M. Buckley.Bishop Vincent. 

Letter to Hon. Henry W. Blair, U. S. S., 1894 ..Mrs Corbin. 

New Zealand.New York Mail & Express, 1897. 

Precedents and the Women of Utah, 1896. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 
Prohibition and Woman Suffrage, 1897.Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 
Protest, P'orm issued by the Albany Association, 1894. 

Prove all Things.An Anti-Suffragist. 

President Elliott Unjustly Quoted. 

Report of Albany Association, 1897.Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn. 

Report of Albany Asociation, 1898.Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn. 

Report of Albany Association, 1899.Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn. 

Shall Women be Burdened with the Ballot?. .Rev. Theo. L. Cuyler. 
Some of the Reasons Against Woman Suffrage. . .Francis Parkman 

The Blank Cartridge Ballot.Rossiter Johnson. 

The Bulwark of Indifference, F. R. S.Mrs. Wm. O. Stillman. 

The New Woman.North Am. Review, Ouida. 

The New Woman..Bishop Seymour. 

The New Woman, Problems of the Day.Appleton’s Monthly. 

The Silent Woman.Buffalo Express, 1897, A. S. W. 

The Woman’s Bible.Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 

The Woman’s Bible.Mrs. Wm. J. Wallace. 

The Woman Suffrage Vote in Massachu.setts.F. C. Lowell. 

The Wrong of Suffrage.,.Heloise Jameson. 

Views on Woman Suffrage. 

Herbert Spencer, Bishop Vincent, John Bright. 
What Good Will Suffrage Do Them ? 

When Lovely Woman Stoops to Politics. .. .New York Times, 1904. 
Why Women Do Not Want To Vote. 

New York Post, March 8, 1905. 
Would Not Help Women Taxpayers. 

New York Tribune, 1896, E. S. C. 
Woman’s Demand for Suffrage. .New York Tribune, 1896, E. S. C. 

Woman and Whine..London World, 1899. 

Woman Has Many Advantages. . . .New York Times, 1896, A. P. P. 

Women and the Liquor Traffic-New York Times, 1896, E. S. C. 

Woman’s Realm.New York Mail & Express, 1897. 

Woman Suffrage..Goldwin Smith. 

Woman Suffrage Not Demanded. New York Times, 1896, A. P. P. 



















Woman Suffrage Defeats. 

Albany Argus, 1898, Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 
Woman Suffrage Defeats, 1898-8-9. .Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 
Woman Suffrage and Wages. New York Tribune, 1896, E. S. C. 
Woman Suffragists’ Weakness. .New York Times, 1896, A. P. P. 
Woman Suffrage, One of the Grievances. . Pop. Science Mo., 1897 

Woman Suffrage. .Jane C. Harvey 

Woman Suffrage, Notable Reversals of Opinion. 

' Horace Bushnell, John Bright, Bishop Vincent. 

Woman’s Protest Against Suffrage, To U. S. Senate, 1886, in 
German. 

Wyoming.!.1895, Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 

Word of Appreciation, to Mrs. Pruyn... 1901, Albany Association. 

* A. P. P., Mrs. Pruyn. 

* E. S. C., Mrs. Crannell. 






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Officers of the Women’s Anti-Suffrage Association of the Third 
Judicial District, State of New York, Headquarters at Albany, 


N. Y.: 

Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn . Honorary President. 

Mrs. William J. Wallace . President. 

Mrs. Wm. Bayard Van Rensselaer . Secretary. 

Mrs. John H. Patterson . Treasurer. 


Executive Committee. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, Chairman. 

Mrs. Frederick Townsend, Mrs. Wm. Gorham Rice, 
Mrs. Joel R. Reed, Mrs. James F . Tracey, 

Mrs. William O. Stillman, Mrs. George W. Steadman, 
Miss Mary B. Fenimore-Cooper, and the principal officers, 

cx-officio. 


Advisory Committee. 


Mrs. Chauncey E. Argersinger 
Mrs. William Barnes, Jr 
Mrs. Lewis Boss 
Mrs. James P. Boyd 
Mrs. Anthony N. Brady 
Mrs. Alden Chester 
Mrs. James Eenimore Cooper 
Mrs. William Croswell Doane 
jMrs. Andrew S. Draper 
Mrs. George Evans 
Mrs. J. Newton Fiero 
Mrs. Andrew Hamilton 
Airs. Marcus T. Hun 
Mrs. D. Cady Herrick 


Mrs, George P. Hilton 
Mrs. Abraham Lansing 
Mrs. John E. AIcElroy 
Mrs. William J. Alilne 
Mrs. Daniel Planning 
Mrs. Robert C. Pruyn 
Mrs. Simon W. Rosendale 
Mrs. William H, Sage 
Mrs. Grange Sard 
Mrs. John Boyd Thacher 
Mrs. Van Rensselaer 
Airs. Samuel B, Ward 
Airs. Chauncey P. Williams 
Mrs. Horace G. Young 


Airs. Benjamin W. Arnold 
Airs. Arthur L. Andrews 
Airs. Theodore AI. Amsdell 
Mrs. Gilbert H. Ackerman 
Mrs. Robert Lenox Banks 
Mrs. Edward Bowditch 
Airs. Fletcher W. Battershall 
Airs. O. M. Benedict 
Airs. Charles F. Bridge 


Vice-Presidents. 

Airs. Abraham Baldwin 
Airs. Edwin A. Bedell 
Airs. Joseph H. Blatner 
Airs. Richard W. Brass 
Airs. Albert V. Bensen 
Airs. Ella M. Balles 
Mrs. Samuel S. Bullions 
Mrs. Charles P. Brate 
Mrs. Thomas Buckley 








Miss Ellen W. Boyd 
Miss Mary E,. Bowditch 
Miss Albena N. Biilkeley 
Mrs. Edward G, Cox 
Mrs. Frederick C. Curtis 
Mrs. John D. Capron 
Mrs. Harry C. Cushman 
Mrs. Jacob C. Cuyler 
Mrs. Frederick W. Cameron 
Miss Mary C. Cagger 
Miss Katherine Fuller Cooper 
Miss Susan De Lancey Cooper 
Miss Margaret Condit 
Miss Esther Louise Camp 
Mrs. William E. Drislane 
Mrs. John A. Delehanty 
Mrs. Henry W. Dun 
Mrs. Curtis N. Douglas 
Mrs. John A. Dix 
Mrs. Spencer L. Dawes 
Miss Sarah W. De Witt . 
Miss Margaret S. Durant 
Mrs. Isaac Edwards 
Mrs. William Easton 
Mrs. Harry G. *Eyres 
Mrs. William R. Elting 
Mrs. John G. Farnsworth 
Mrs. John H. Farrell 
Mrs. James C. Farrell 
Mrs. Lawrence Fassett 
Miss Anna French 
Miss Margaret H. Freeman 
Mrs. Charles H. Gaus 
Mrs. George H. Gibson 
Mrs. John H. Gardner 
Mrs. Scott D. M. Goodwin 
Mrs. Alexander S. Girvin 
Mrs. Clifford D. Gregory 
Mrs. Erastus Palmer Gavit 
Mrs. Lewis S. Greenleaf 
Mrs. Martin H. Glynn 
Mrs. Frank A. Harrington 
Mrs. Samuel Hand 
Mrs. Albert C. Hessburg 
Mrs. Oscar L. Hascy 
Mrs. Thomas H. Ham 
Mrs. Edwin M. Holbrook 
Mrs. John A. Howe 
Mrs. Frederick Harris 


Mrs. Henry Hun 
Mrs. Henry E. Hawley 
Mrs. John Taylor Ilall 
Mrs. Edward Hun 
Mrs. Michael E. Higgins 
Mrs. Francis C. Huyck 
Miss Pauline Harris 
Airs. D. V. R. Johnston 
Miss Marie Jermain 
Airs. William Kidd 
Airs. James B. Kelley 
Mrs. James Kidd 
Mrs. Irving Knickerbocker 
IVlrs. Frederick W. Kelley 
Mrs. J. Townsend Lansing 
Airs. William L. Learned 
Airs. Joseph A. Lawson 
Airs. Gardner C. Leonard 
Airs. Gerrit Y. Lansing 
Airs. Charles La Dow 
Airs. Edgar C. Leonard 
Mrs. George P. Lawton 
Airs, Archibald J. AIcClure 
Mrs, William H. AIcClure 
Mrs, John W. AIcHarg 
Alrs.^Charles E. AIcElroy 
Mrs. Edward N, AIcKinney 
AIiss Anna AIcClellan 
Miss Helen M. AlacElwee 
AIiss Annie AlacNaughton 
Mrs. John H, Alead 
Airs. Selden E. Alarvin 
Airs. Samuel N. Alunson 
Airs. James H. Alanning 
Mrs. Cyrus S. Alerrill 
Mrs. Frederick C. Alanning 
Mrs. Edward J. Meegan 
Airs. Edgar L. Alurlin 
AIiss Sarah J. Alonteath 
AIiss Harriette Alonteath 
AIiss Cornelia H. Alathcr 
Airs. Michael N. Nolan 
Mrs. Walter N. Newton 
Mrs. John L. Newman 
Mrs. Richard H. Nelson 
Mrs. Douglas W. Olcott 
Airs. Abram F. Onderdonk 
Mrs. Joseph P, Ord 
Mrs. Robert Shaw Oliver 


Mrs. John D. Parsons, Jr. 

Mrs. Rufus W. Peckhani 
Mrs. Augustus Pruyn 
Mrs. William Prall 
Mrs. Arthur W. Pray 
Mrs. H. Bowne Parsons 
Mrs. Erastus D. Palmer 
Mrs. Charles L. Pruyn 
Mrs. Gregory Palmer 
Mrs. Amasa J. Parker, Jr. 

Mrs. Lewis R. Parker 
Mrs. Walter L. Palmer 
Mrs. Edward DeL. Palmer 
Mrs. Amos P. Palmer, Jr. 

Mrs. John De Witt Peltz 

Mrs. William P. Rudd 

Mrs. Harmon P. Read 

Mrs. Acors Rathbun 

Mrs. James M. Ruso 

Mrs. Edward D. Ronan 

Mrs. Albertus H. Richards 

Mrs. Clarence Rathbone 

Mrs. John H. Reynolds 

]\lys. Charles A. Richmond 

Mrs. Sidney W. Rowell 

iMrs. Marion Randolph 

Mrs. Henry Russell 

Mrs. Leonard Woods Richardson 

Mrs. Montgomery Rochester 

Miss Anna H. Rodgers 

Miss Caroline A. Rockwell 

Miss Harriet Roe 

Miss Cornelia K. Rathbone 

Mrs. Hariy Roy Sweny 

Mrs. Bleecker Sanders 

Mrs. Herbert W. Stickney 

Mrs. John E. Sherwood 

Mrs. Dean Sage 

Mrs. Edwin C. Smith 

Mrs. Charles H. Sabin 

Mrs. Henry King Sturdee 

Mrs. Francis Shields 


Mrs. Henry M. Sage 
Miss Julia A. Southwick 
Miss Sarah F. Sumner 
Miss Marion K. Sard 
iMiss Catherine R. Seabury 
Mrs. Theodore Townsend 
Mrs. Rufus K. Townsend 
Mrs. Montgomery H. Throop 
Mrs. Frederick Tillinghast 
Mrs. J. Wilbur Tillinghast 
iVlrs. George H. Thacher 
Mrs. Jacob H. Ten Eyck 
Mrs. Charles Tracey 
Mrs. David A. Thompson 
Mrs. Samuel B. Towner 
JNlrs. Samuel Templeton 
Mrs. Luther H. Tucker, Jr. 

Mrs. Richard H. Talcott 

Mrs. George H. Treadwell 

Miss Annie M. Talcott 

Mrs. Jasper Van Wormer 

Mrs. Isaac W. Vosburgh 

Mrs. Edgar A. Vander Veer 

Mrs. Charles H. Van Benthuysen 

Mrs. Isaac Vanderpoel 

Mrs. James Vint 

Miss Mary M. Vosburgh 

Mrs. W^illiam M. Whitney 

Mrs. Stephen W. Whitney 

Mrs. Andrew G. White 

Mrs. Augustus H. Walsh 

Mrs. George P. Wilson 

JMrs. Frederick E. W^adhams 

Mrs. Henry P. Warren 

Mrs. Theodore H. Waterman 

Mrs. Paul Wadsworth 

Mrs. Charles L. A. Whitney 

Miss Kate A. Wing 

Miss Mary M. Wasson 

Miss Abby S. Walsh 

Mrs. Edward N. Waterman 



The following revSolution was offered by Mrs, J. V. L. 
Pruyii, and was unanimously adopted, and vsigned by all 
present : 

' 'To the constitutional convention of the State of New York. 
Gentlemen : 

“ We, the undersigned women of the State of New York, 
respectfully remonstrate against the imposition of political 
duties upon women, and beg to present to your honorable 
body this brief statement of the reasons which compel us to 
urge our earnest request that the proposal to strike out the 
word ‘' male, ’ ’ in the constitutional qualification of voters in 
the State of New York, may not prevail. 

“First — The theory that suffrage is a natural right is mis¬ 
taken and false. It is and always has been a political privi¬ 
lege granted by the government to the governed. The very 
fact of this petition proves that the people who make up the 
government of this country may extend or restrict the power 
to vote, as it has been from time to time granted, modified 
or withheld on grounds of public advantage or expediency. 

‘ ‘ Second --- There is no reason why the privilege should . 
be extended to women in America in this country for any 
protection or preservation of their rights. Whatever may 
be urged in England, or w^hatever may have been urged in 
America a half century ago, it cannot be doubted that 
women are absolutely and abundantly protected now under 
the existing system of suffrage, and every .step in advance 
has been secured by the votes of men. 

‘ ‘ Third — The true application of the term ‘ ‘ taxation 
without representation,” is not that every tax payer should 
vote, but that such representation should be assured as will 
give to every property holder the protection of his or her 


property and rights. The male votes of America have so 
generously represented women, that they have to-day a de¬ 
gree of protection, as to their personal property, far beyond 
that which is given to men. 

“Fourth — The evil effects of unqualified universal 
suffrage are already so serious and so widely felt, that it 
would only increase the danger which menaces our free in¬ 
stitutions to-day to enlarge the suffrage by an increase of 
voters similarly unqualified. 

‘ ‘ Fifth — The temptation to corruption in buying the 
votes of large numbers of uneducated women, with no fixed 
political principles and entirely irresponsible, would be enor¬ 
mous. It is a felt fact to-day, that in our large towns it is 
difficult to get out the intelligent and incorruptible voters, 
and this same tendency would undoubtedly swell the number 
of the worst class at the polls. 

‘ ‘ Sixth — The granting of the privilege to vote would 
mean the right to be voted for, participation in the canvass, 
the entrance into the arena of what is called practical politics; 
from all which things women are excluded, not by law. but by 
the domestic duties, their temperament, their instincts and 
preferences 

-f' 

“Seventh — Placing of this power and privilege in the 
hands of women would mean their exposure to conflicts and 
contests for which their whole constitution, training and 
character absolutely unfit them as much as they are unfitted 
for service in the militia, the police, or the fire departments, 

‘ ‘ Eighth — The relation between men and women in mat¬ 
ters of government which now rests upon the strong and 
growing sentiment of chivalry and courtesy, would be rudely 
disturbed, and antagonism and rivalry both in families and 
in society would take their place to the discomfort of both 
sexes, and the especial detriment of the best interests of 
women.” 



2 


Nowhere have such important changes been made in the 
law conferring rights upon women as in the State of New 
York.. Previous to 1848 the legal existence of a married 
woman was merged in her husband. Every agreement made 
without his consent was void. She could not execute a 
paper of any kind by which she entered into a contract, which 
would bind either herself or her separate property. The 
husband might take and dispose of the wife’s personal prop¬ 
erty at his pleasure, and on her death it went to the husband, 
while he was entitled to the use of her real estate during 
his life. 

“ In 1848 the law was so amended as to provide that the 
real and personal property of a woman who married there¬ 
after, should not be subject to the disposal of her husband, 
and in 1849, that any married woman might take personal 
property, by inheritance, to her sole and personal use, and 
devise her property as if she were unmarried. In i860, that 
the property which a married woman either owned at the 
time of her marriage or acquired afterwards, should so re¬ 
main and should not be subject to interference and control of 
her husband, and that she might contract with reference to 
her separate property, and carry on trade or business on her 
own account and be entitled to the proceeds. 

“ In 1862 she was authorized to convey real estate in the 
same manner as if she were unmarried. In 1864 it was 
enacted that a married woman may contract to the same 
extent, with like effect, and in the same form as if unmarried. 

“ In 1890 a woman was authorized to sue, and might be 
sued the same as if unmarried. In 1892 it was provided that 
a married woman might contract with her husband, retaining 
the express provision that a husband shall not be relieved 
from the liability to support the wife. 

“ Thus the emancipation of women, so far as the husband 
is concerned, is fully accomplished, at the same time leaving 
to her right of dower to her husband’s estate, and the right 


3 


to inherit a certain portion of his personal property in case he 
dies without otherwise disposing of it, and retaining all her 
previous rights to demand support and maintenance from 
her husband. 

“// is to be particularly noted that all these rights and 
privileges have been granted women^ not at the request or 
solicitation of wome 7 iy but as a voluntary concession^ jnade 
by me 7 i to womanly wome 7 i in recognitio 7 i of natu 7 'al right 
a 7 id justice. 

“While the law still recognizes the husband as the head 
of the family, as regards control of the household, the rule is 
well established that in case of controversy, it gives the care of 
the children to the parent with whom the child will be best 
cared for and protected, with but little or no reference to 
questions other than those relating to its welfare depending 
upon its sex, age and general conditions.” 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 
13 Elk Street, Albany, N. Y. 

OffickRvS of the Albany. Anti-Suffrage 
Association. 

Mrs. J. V. E. Pruyn, Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, 
President. Chairniaji. 

Mrs. William J. Wallace, Mrs. Erastus Corning, 
ist Vice-Preside7it. Mrs. J. Howard King, 
Mrs.W.B.VanRensselaer, Mrs. Wm. O. Stillman, 
Secf'etary. Mrs. William Cassidy, 

Mrs. Joseph Gavit, Mrs. Joel R. Reed, 

Treasurer. Mrs. FrederickTownsend, 
Miss Lucy A. Plympton, 

Ex ecu live C0771771 it tee. 



Paper by J. Newton Fiero at Anti-Suffrage 
Meeting, May iith, 1894. 


It were a rash man to attempt “ By either force or skill to turn 
the current of a woman’s will,” and it must therefore be conceded 
on all hands that when the majority of the women of New York 
favor the extension of suffrage it will speedily become an accomplished 
fact. Since men will grant this privilege when women demand it, 
as they have conceded heretofore more than could be reasonably 
required, through their disposition to treat the gentler sex not only 
with justice but in a broad-minded and liberal spirit. 

The question is not whether men will exclude women from a right 
to which they are absolutely entitled, but a broader and more compre¬ 
hensive one. Will women be benefited by the suffrage, or will its 
exercise tend to their real disadvantage ? If it is to be valuable to 
them, men will yield it with pleasure. If it is to be injurious or 
disadvantageous to them, then men will refuse to grant the dangerous 
privilege even though it is claimed as a heaven-born right, and 
refuse it because of their interest in and respect for women. 

The average man, as in duty bound, treats this question in its 
relation to him as a son, a husband or a father, and as he regards 
women in the light of mother, wife or daughter, and cannot escape 
looking at the question from the point of view that he owes a duty 
of care and protection to what is physically, at least, the weaker 
sex. True, many women are both independent and self-supporting, 
but the discussion of this subject must proceed with reference to the 
condition of the great mass of women and to their relations to each 
other and to the race, and not solely with a view to the interests of 
the minority who are self-supporting, or for any other reason 
indifferent to the attention, protection and courtesies of the sterner 
sex. 

As was justly observed on a very recent public occasion by a 
polished and accomplished orator, the question is from its nature one 
of extreme delicacy and cannot be treated in many of its aspects 
with the frankness its importance demands, since much must be left 
unsaid that has an important bearing upon the determination of the 
question, but its main features, as to the benefits and disadvantages 
of the suffrage to the gentler sex, are open to full discussion. 






Woman is not qualified for the ballot or likely to be benefited by 
its exercise for physical and physiological reasons : 

Plato in his ideal Republic, in order to arrive at a conclusion as 
to the propriety of woman’s sharing in the duties citizens owe to the 
state, asks, “ Is she capable of sharing, either wholly or partially, 
or not at all, in the actions of men,” and seems to regard her right to 
participate in the affairs of Government to be determined by the 
answer of the question he proposes : ‘ ‘ Whether she can share in the 
toils of war and the defense of the country ? ’ ’ 

The right to take part in the political affairs is one of the same 
class of duties as the performance of duty as jurors in courts of 
justice, and service, voluntary or compulsory, in the army and navy, 
and from time immemorial the person exercising political control in 
time of Peace have been held responsible for the preservation of the 
Government by force of arms in the time of war. 

The protest against the suffrage rightly speaks of its burdens 
and responsibilities,since with the right to vote is closely connected the 
enforcement of purity of the ballot, the inquiry into the honesty 
and capability of public officials and the proper administration of 
affairs of Government. To all these, women are manifestly and 
confessedly unequal. Physically, women are not fitted for the task 
of protecting and upholding any form of government. They may 
be active in putting it in operation by their ballots but must yield 
the burden and cast aside the responsibility when the circumstances 
demand strength and endurance in camp or on the battlefield. These 
are, however, necessarily and logically connected with the right to 
the ballot and are burdens and responsibilities which must reasonably 
be assumed as inseparable from it. Women must therefore recognize 
the natural limitations upon her strength and fitness to discharge the 
duties of citizenship. 

From what may reasonably be termed a business standpoint, 
involving the legal rights of women, there is certainly little to be 
desired by way of improvement or reform and nothing to be gained 
by her active participation in politics. The old restrictions upon the 
rights of women to hold property independent of their husbands and 
to deal with it in the same manner as men have been entirely swept 
away, and women stand before the law in every respect entitled to 
at least the same rights and privileges as the sterner sex. In 
addition there is a survival of all the old rules devised as a protection 
to women, well illustrated by the retention upon the statute books 
of the right of dower whidi every married woman has in the real estate 
of her husband, so that he is unable to dispose of his real property 


without her consent, and the right on the part of the wife to demand 
and receive from the husband support and maintenance according to 
his rank and station in life and his ability to provide for himself and 
family. Thus, in no respect is woman hampered by law as regards 
material affairs, but rather highly favored by its provisions and 
the reason so frequently and persistently alleged that women should 
be granted the ballot, that she may be able to protect herself in her 
property rights, is entirely dissipated by the progress of modern law 
reform in the direction of legal emancipation of women, so that in 
truth and fact she is entitled not only to absolutely control her own 
property but to certain rights in that of her husband, of which she 
cannot by any act of his be divested or deprived. 

In the natural course of events and order of things the right 
of suffrage, by means of which woman is expected to provide for 
and protect herself at the polls, must react against her so far as her 
legal rights are concerned, by compelling men to lay aside all con¬ 
siderations of compliment, chivalry or courtesy and assert their ^ 
rights, to at least an equality with reference to property interests. 
It can scarcely be possible that women can at the same time appeal 
to the sense of justice in men by reason of their helplessness and in 
the same breath insist upon their rights at the ballot box which are 
to be enforced by their political power. 

There still remains the sentimental side of the question,— 
difficult of treatment and scarcely possible of adequate presentation,— 
well expressed in a recent pithy discussion of the question in these 
words, “ It seems a pity that the barriers to harmony and sympathy 
between men and women, which have been building for the last fifty 
years, should be increased by this new effort, in as much as the sexes 
cannot exist without each other as long as the world lasts. American 
women, of all others, should shrink from encouraging distrust in 
their husbands and fathers and looking upon them as they are learn¬ 
ing to do in the light of lineal descendants of the forty thieves.” 

If women are no longer to rely upon the fact that they are to be 
treated with consideration because they are the weaker sex physically, 
but insist upon certain alleged rights and privileges because they 
may be able at the ballot box to govern and control Legislation, they 
must certainly expect but scant courtesy outside of matters of strict 
j ustice and can scarcely be reasonably expected to receive at the 
hands of men that chivalrous treatment with regard, not only to 
their rights but as to their privileges, which is now so cheerfully 
accorded them. In this aspect, assertion of power must, in every 
respect, be disadvantageous to women, since they are certainly not 


so well qualified to carry on the machinery of politics and the 
administration of the affairs of Government as are men, by reason 
of their nature, education and experience. 

It is insisted that the advent of women in the field of active 
political life would tend to purify elections and reform legislators, 
which is by no means likely, since it is much more probable that in 
the contact with political methods at the polls and in the details of 
legislation, women would be dragged to the political level of men 
than elevate the existing standard of political morality. Even 
were it otherwise, it would seem that the price would be too great 
to pay for a reform of this character, if, in order to accomplish it, 
women must not only exercise the right of suffrage, but as its logical 
outcome, must atteud the primaries, arrange for local assemblies and 
political meetings, be active at the caucus and upon the stump and 
take upon themselves not only the right and privileges but the 
burdens and responsibilities of the ward politician as well as of the 
statesman. 

It is for these, among other reasons, that women have not here¬ 
tofore desired, and do not, as to the majority, now insist upon 
the right of suffrage, and this question must ultimately turn, not 
upon whether suffrage is their natural right or whether it may prove 
expedient to the administration of governmental affairs, but upon its 
effect upon women as such, whether beneficial or the contrary, and 
until the gentler sex are fully satisfied that they will receive some 
substantial and material benefit from the burdens and responsibilities 
of the suffrage, the majority will continue to protest against having 
cast upon them a right which will subject them to personal 
annoyance, serious inconveniences and material disadvantages, with¬ 
out corresponding benefits. ^ Until such time, Man as the natural 
guardian and protector of woman will insist upon shielding her from 
burdens and responsibilities fit to be borne alone by that sterner sex 
which is endowed by nature in such a manner as to be physically 
adapted to govern as statesman, or, if need be, maintain as soldiers 
the integrity of the political institutions for which it should be solely 
responsible. 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 13 Elk 
Street, Albany, N. Y. 



Why Women Should Not Vote 


Remarks made by the Hon. Matthew Hade, at a Mass Meeting 

CALLED BY THE AnTI-WoMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION 
OF Albany, N. Y., May ii, 1894. 

[The address of Mr. Hale was made without notes, and cannot be reproduced as delivered, but this 
leaflet contains the principal points of his arguments.' 

I'ELLOw CiTizE.xs, Maee AND FEMALE 1— The subjeot before you is one of greai 
iinpoitauce. A Coiiveutiou to revise the Constitution of this State commenced its ses 
sion in this city last Tuesday. That Convention is asked, by striking out the word 
male from that part of the Constitution which confers the right of voting, to make 
all women over the age of 21 years, who are residents and citizens of the State, com 
potent voters at all elections! 

The number of votes cast at the general election of 1892, was in round numbers one 
million and a quarter. If this amendment is adopted, the addition of an equal numbei 
of women, will make the number of voters about two million and a half. 

The question is, is this immense increase in the voting population of the State 
desirable? Is it necessary for the protection of women? Would it be beneficial to the 
State? Unless these questions can be answered in the affirmative, I think we will all 
agree that the experiment which the Convention is asked to make, ought not to be tried. 

In discussing this question, it is well to consider, what have been the rights of women, 
and what they are. 

Women, as such, have never been discriminated against in this State as to life, 
lil.-erty or property. Single women, whether spinsters or widows, have always had pre¬ 
cisely the same rights as man. But married women were at the common law, which was 
the law of this State on this subject until 1S4S, under certain disabilities in regard to 
controlling and disposing of property and making contracts. 

These disabilities all resulted from the doctrine that the husband and wife were one. 
and that the wife’s legal existence was merged during marriage in that of the husband. 
This principle of the common law was based upon what seemed to be plain declarations 
of the Bible. But these disabilities have all been removed. The laws have been made 
more and more favorable to married women, until now their rights are equal in all 
respects so far as relates to the control of property, and to the custody of children, to 
those of married men, and in some respects, superior. If I have real estate, I cannot 
convey it and give a good title to my grantee, unless my wife joins in the deed. I can¬ 
not, by my will, dispose of my real estate so as to deprive my wife, against her will, 
of her right of dower. But she can by deed, or will, dispose of her entire estate, real 
and personal, whether I consent or not, and give good title. A father cannot now 
apprentice his child, or make a valid appointment of a testamentary guardian, without 
Ihe consent of the mother, if she be living. The wife can carry on buskiess on her own 
account, and is entitled to all the profits and earnings in that business, and may contract 
as if she were unmarried. 

But it is said that these changes in the common law have been brought about by 
women. If this is so, they have been caused by them without the ballot. They have 
effected these changes by their influence upon men. their husbands, sons, fathers and 
brothers. The men have done better for them than they would have done for them¬ 
selves. For, if, they, with their well-known modesty and magnanimity, had been mem- 





}ers of the Legislature, they would hardly luive put themselves ou a better footing as 
:o property, than men. If women, Ijy their intluenee merely, without the ballot, ami 
.vithout political power, have been able to accomplish such great results, why should 
hey be bothered with the ballot? Why should they be obliged to expose themselves to 
he foul language, disgraceful contests and bloody noses which you have heard Father 
iValworth describe this evening as frequent accompaniments of elections? 

But it is said that the right to vote is a natural right. I do not know exactly what 
s meant by this claim. It has never been esteemed a natural right. No man could 
rote in this State prior to 1S22 unless he possessed certain property qualitications. No 
natter how bright and well informed a young man who has not reached the age of 
wenty-one is, he cannot vote. The Declaration of Independence in its enumeration of 
he inalienable rights of man, did not mention or in' any way include the supposed right 
o vote. Voting is only a means to an end. The end is a government which shall pro- 
:ect all in their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in which last is 
iicluded the right to acquire and enjoy property. Women have these rights now just 
IS completely as is possible. No amount of legislation could give them more or greater 
•ights. What possible good will it do them to vote? 

But it is said that women paj’ taxes, and to deprive them of suffrage is “ taxation 
without representation.” But taxes are not conditioned upon the right to vote. The 
property of women is protected bj" the laws just as much as that of men. Taxes are 
necessary, in order to defray the expenses of government, in protecting the lives, liber- 
des and property of citizens, whether men or women. But women are represented. 
The fact that by women's influence, laws have been passed putting them in an e<pial 
nr superior position to that of men, shows that they have been represented. It is 
tbsurd to say that a woman, a member of a family, is not represented by her father, her 
son, her brother or her husband. Our forefathers complained of “ taxation without 
representation,” because taxes were imposed upon them by a parliament sitting three 
thousand miles away, in which there was no representation whatever of the colonies, 
fhere is not the slightest analogy between their case and this. Taxation is not in our 
State a condition of the right of suffrage. If it were, the man paying heavy taxes 
would have more votes than the man paying none. But as it is, Mr. Astor or INIr, 
Vanderbilt has no more power at the polls than the man who has not money enough 
to buy a five cent breakfast, unless he uses his money to buy votes. Then there is in 
taxation no discrimination against women; nor does anybody apprehend that there 
ever will be such discrimination. No tax law could ever be passed which undertook 
to discriminate against women in favor of men. No such law was ever suggested. 
There are many cases where people are taxed who cannot vote.; For instance, if a 
citizen of New York owns land in another State, he will be taxed in that State, although 
he cannot vote there. If an Albanian has real estate in Boston, he must pay taxes 
there, and he cannot resist the payment on the ground that he is not allowed to vote in 
Massachusetts. Taxation is the price which citizens pay for the protection of their 
property, their lives and their liberty. It is in no sense a compensation paid by them 
for the privilege of voting. 

There is another point which must be looked in the face. AVe cannot turn our 
eyes from facts that bear on the subject, because they are unpleasant. There are in 
the city of New^York, a multitude of women whose number is variously estimated at 
from 30.000 to 50,000. who get their living by a life of shame. Thev sell themselves 
daily, soul and body. Every city in the State adds to the number of this disreputable 
ai-my. The number of these women is so great that in a close election, they would 
hold the balance of power. Of course, their votes would be for sale, and they would 
be controlled not by moral or respectable men, not by the better element in politics, 
but by the most unscrupulous, immoral and degraded of the male sex. Is the introduc- 


(1011 ot these d is rep lit able women into the political arena going to elevate or purify 
piactieal politics? l)o the respectable women of the commimity wish to be brought in 
contact with this degraded class’? Will not the inevitable effect of making women, 
good and bad, voters, be to give to this class of women an influence and power which 
they do not now possess? Will not the conferring of the suffrage upon them tend 
to demoralize multitudes of young men and young women, who will thus be brought ^ 
in contact with these degraded women? It has been argued by some that the number 
of respectable women is so much greater, that this class could easily be outvoted; but 
the difficulty will be just as it is now, with the male voters, that the good women will 
not unite, liespectable women will be divided in politics probably in about the same 
way that their husbands and sons and brothers are now, and this disreputable and pur¬ 
chasable element will control. i ' 

The great danger which now threatens republican institutions comes from bribery 
and corruption. Does anybodj’ believe that a less proportion of women will be found 
susceptible to bribery than of men? Unless it can be shown that wmmen, taken as a 
whole, are less susceptible than men to bribery and similar influences, then the doubling 
of the voting population will certainly not tend to diminish bribery and corruption. 

This demand for female suffrage is not new. There was a convention held in this 
cUy beginning in 1SG7, of which I had the honor to be a member, which had this subject 
before it. Precisely the same amendment was off’ered in that convention—to strike the 
word “ male ” from the section which confers the right of suffrage. That amendment 
was advocjited by one of tlie most brilliant men of this generation, for whom all the 
members of that convention, myself included, entertained the greatest admiration— 
George William Curtis. He made, perhaps the most powerful and eloquent speech on 
that side of the question, Avhich has ever been made. The result was that when the vote 
was taken, 19 votes were recorded in favor of the amendment, while there were 125 
against it. It may be said that the 125 who voted against it were unenlightened men, 
who were behind the age. Possibly this is so; but among the negative votes, were 
three men who afterwards became judges of the Court of Appeals, including its present 
Chief .Judge and its first Chief .Judge. There were among them such men as Senator 
Kernan, of Utica, Judge Comstock, of Syracuse, Judge Parker, of this city, Horace 
Greeley and Prof. T. W. Dwight, of New York, and many others who are generally 
supposed to have been among the most intelligent and enlightened men of their day 
and generation. 

P.ut this question is not to be determined by authority. It must be conceded that 
very many intelligent and public spirited men and women are in favor of the change. I 
think they.are mistaken; and that they do not correctly foresee the results which would 
follow if the change should be made. But we must give them credit for sincerity, ami 
meet what they suppose to be arguinents, by reason and not by denunciation. 

I think in many of their speeches, the advocates of woman suffrage show great 
lack of self-restraint, and an unfortunate tendency to exaggeration. For instance, one 
of the most distinguished advocates of this change is reported to have said in a recent 
speech in this city that there is but one slave in New Y^ork, and that is woman. When 
we consider what are the necessary elements of slavery: that a slave has no rights of 
property; that a slave can be sold and separated from his or her family; that his or 
I her children can be sold away without any possibility of interference' on his or her 
I part; it is difficult to see how any intelligent person can say with sincerity that there 
1 are any elements of slavery in the condition of women at this time. If women are 
I slaves, I would like to know who are their masters. ^len are bound to support them, 
i They are not bound to support their husbands. Men are bound to protect them. Women 
! have the right of absolute disposal of their own property, the abmlute control of their owm 
i liberty; equal rights with their husbands to the custody of their children; and still 



we are informed by women who are advocatin?’ the extension of suffrage to women, ’ 
that women are slaves! t > 

The advocates of woman suffrage often show a singular Avant of knowledge as to 
the actual state of the laAv. In one of the neAvspapers in this city, some days ago, was 
an article which was moderate and fair in tone. The Avriter in alluding to the uupleas- j 
ant fact that I have mentioned, the existence of this large class of AA'omen Avho lead i 
bad lives, said in substance that the men were responsible for licensing places in Avhich 
these women were kept. The’writer was evidently intelligent, and supposed that places 
of this kind AA^ere licensed by laAv, but she was all wrong. The truth is that such places - 
are forbidden by Ij^Av. The laws on the subject are strict enough. The diffi- , 
culty is that they are ^not enforced. If these Avomen should control legislation, they 
Avould perhaps pass kTP^even stricter than those noAv on the statute book, prohibiting 
all forms of sin and immorality; but they would be as ineffective as a law would have 
been which was introduced in our Legislature under peculiar circumstances. A mem¬ 
ber of Assembly from someAvhere in the “ southern tier ” of counties, asked unanimous 
consent to introduce a bill which he desired to have read for the information of the 
Assembly, as he said there could be no objection to it; it Avas A^ery short, consisting of ' 
only two sections, and could be read jn a minute. Thereupon the bill Avas presented ! 
and read, as folloAvs: “Section 1. Immorality of every kind is hereby abolished. Sec- 
, tion 2. This act shall take effect immediately.” Although the bill AA'as not objected to, 

, it did not become a law. If it had, it is hardly to be supposed that the millennium 
Avould have begun at once. Legislation to be effective must be practical. Sin cannot 
be exterminated by act of Legislature. The argument that Avomeu. if elected. Avould 
pass laws AAdiich would abolish all forms of evil, has no foundation in practical common 
sense. ^ 

It may be conceded that there are many AA'omen whose intelligence and integrity 
Avould qualify them to vote, and aa'Iio are much better qualified to vote than many men 
AA'ho exercise the franchise; but it by no means folloAA's that the suffrage should there¬ 
fore be conferred upon women. UniA'ersal male suffrage cannot be said to have been 
entirely a success. Ignorance, bribery and corruption, bigotry and intolerance preAmil 
to a great extent even noAA*, and A'ery greatly impair the usefulness of a republican 
form of goA'ernment. Instead of these eA'ils being mitigated by extending the suffrage 
. to women, it is my belief that they AA’ould be greatly increased. The success of the 
^woman suffrage movement would not tend, in my judgment, to purify politics or eleAmte 
the tone of public life; but the reverse. The question, hoAvever, is one upon Avhicli 
the deliberate sentiment of the women themselves, will ultimately be conclusive. As 
long as a majority of the intelligent and respectable AA’omen of the country belieA'e that i 
conferring the suffrage upon them will not benefit them or the State, there is little j 
danger that they will. l)y constitutional amendment, be made voters, and compelled to j 
assume the responsibility which the right of suffrage necessarily carries with it. 

) 


Anti-Suffrage Pamphlets may be obtained at 13 Elk Street, Albany. 




Protest Against Woman Suffrage. 

ADDRRSS DELIVERED BY 

The Rev. FATHER WALSH, of Troy, 

At a Mans Meelinq called hy^ the Anti-Woman's Snljrane Association of 

Albany, N. F. 


Ladies /nd (Jenflemex.—A giDiillkMiin.n (vf our city witli moTO tact Ibau 
on IxMiiii' .nskcd to cxi»r(\ss n.ii o])iiiion on woinnii snlTrago, mot 
his .inoy^tioiKM willi lliis rmnark: “'Phis is a womnii’s (incstioii and must 
ho (h'C^lod l)y wonum.” 

llnl^l)l)iily for wonuMi, Ihon.eh it. is a. woman’s (inositioii, ilt is to bo d(‘- 
cid(‘d/by imm only —by nnm In tho E^oiiistiinitiional CoiiiV'cmition, and by tlio 
mon Vob'rs afti'rward, if tins eoinamtion d(‘oid(‘ to adopt it. Eoi‘ this r(‘a- 
son inon Avill by conrt.(\sy and m'ict's.sity t.ak(‘ i)airt in tlmso in’oliminary 
iiKH'itings wlndlH'r oalh'd to iM‘omot(‘ <n* (h'foait fomalo snffrago. 

lloforo this andionco of tho 2 :('ntlo Avoinon of tins city, coiiAnnuxI for tin* 
l)nrpos<‘ of A'oiOinu’ oi)i)osi'tion to any anumdnnmt to tho Gonstitntion 
invostinijx AA'onum with tho riidit of snffrae^o, 1 cra.vo a reliihons roA'oronco 
for AA'omian. In oi>posinjj: AAdiat aa'(‘ iMdioNx*- to bo a movonn'in't ealcnlatod 
to di'grado AAannan, aax^ aro im])r('iSsod altogotln'r by the diaing('r lurking 
ninhu’ a.n assnniod i)i'iA'ik'go, and right. Avhich threatonis the position and 
(diaractor of this Ixnng, AA'hom aa'o Avonld IniAU' liko Gaosar’s Aviftv—AA’ithont 
snsi)icion or n‘i)roach. 

No OIK' luM'o (\an forgt'it his ind(‘;bt(sln(‘ss to Avomaii. T(v lior as mother, 
sistm’, AMifi’^ or fri(>n<l, aax" (>aa’"<‘ tlu‘> t('nd('ir(‘st. omoitiioms of life—th(‘ noblest 
(d<‘mont.s of charaotoir—tlu'^ i)nr('st asi»ira.tions and tlu^^ swe(‘t(‘st symi])athy 
in joy and soim-oaa'. Into her arms Ave aro born. Watehing her lips av(‘ 
begin to s]>oak; io^l by her hand av(‘ loam to AAalk in otxHlieneo of Iuaa". 
In i>ainiling. scadidnrc^ and ivoetry. sho giAX'S ns idicals of miioeone<‘ ainl 
Ix^anty. ilnmKxnuM' is a. AA'cnmui; chastity is a AA Oinaii; charity is a wojnan. 
I and yon do noit Avish to los(^ this ideal Avoinaii. i 

1 belong !<)• ;i church AAiiero AAannan has lusm cIoHumI with high rospon- 
sibilitios, a.nd (‘Aumi tln^ righit to An)t/(\ In all our ndigions orders of AAmmon. 
sometiiim'S all tin* sid)j(Hds. and soimdiim's a few, oxorciis(‘ this right, in 
the selection.of tlndr superiors. 

Is there then inconsisUmey in my i)r(*s<Mit position? 

'In the sphere of morals, to vole or not to Amt.{\ is a neutral duty. It is 
tho sniTonndings AA'hich may lead to demoralization and degradation—not 
the mere act of msting the i)a.llot. If I ea.n bo convinced that the right of 
suffrage granted to Avonien may be ex(‘a'cis(‘d as innocently, as harmlessly, 
a.midst all tho filth, (d)sconity, blasi)he'my and pfwjnry of our modern 
IM)lling-boo(th as in tho ])eac(‘, solitude and jinrity of the cloister, then 1 am 
AA’illing to b(‘ r('cor<l('d as in fa.A^or of AA'^omaiU snttrago. 

If 1 can b(‘ conAineed that this enfranchisement of woman is ne(‘ded to 
idealize AV(wna.n still nior(‘, or make her more Avonianly, or s<'cnre her in 
greater i>nrily and innocence, or doopon her sympathetic* and ndigions 
nature, or stinmgthen hm* maternal and domestic instincts, tlien I will 
giadly'lift my A'oice, and c'xert my intlnonce, in behalf of gi'anting this 
boon to AA'omau. • 





1 lia.vo y(*it t<> h'jini tluit a single advoente of fcMiiale snffj'age lias coii- 
l(‘ii<l(‘(l for tlu^ nieasnnj for the reason iliait. Its coneossioii will iinlirove anil 
Siln'iigtlK'ii :iii(l saf(''giianl tli(‘ fennih^ cluirneter. Mneli deeiliMiiatlon is in- 
OnlgiMl in on the iiU'a. that It is a hurtful discriiuiuatiou bcvtweeu “male” 
and “feinak'^” in the. (Jodistituition—or that, wonum will lU'ver ('iijoy the 
full nu'asure of lil)(''rt.y till they can vote, or that women owning iirojierty 
ar(‘ unjustly taxed by others; and they have a foiiduess for the axiojn, 
“ No ta.xatiou without ri'preisentatiou.” 

(hill tluM'i^ be serious disagn'ement as to the ri'sult of Iut eiifrauehise- 
numt? Itnin and iHilities are the ruin of vaist numbiM's of onr citizens, 
liumrabk' and diH'iinmiing eorrniitiou is the condition of ]ioliti(,'S to-day. 
Polling places are iiestikMilial spots, siH'lh'ing with iierjury, brilK'ry, iin- 
e'k\-in language and rowdyism. I hav(' lU'ver yi't cast a ballot that 1 did 
not blush for shame bi'caiise of this ti'iiiiiorary association. 1 have no 
hoiie that these evils will (wer In'! cured tdl some limiitation is placed on 
the farce of uuiiversa.l suffrage'. Parties ambitious of political ascendency 
or continuance in iiower will perpetuate tlu'in. , 

'f'hese f(''male suffrag-i** fanatii's say: “ Pet the womi'ii vote and Imaliug 
will co'iiH' to the festering and hideous sores of politics. Let the woman 
bring all her ri'linenw'.ii't and de'licacy, and intc'-lligeuce and symi>a,‘Jiy 
down into this noisoniK'' vortex, and she will bring peace, orih'rliness and 
purity out of confusion, chaos and iinck*anliuess.” i 

Ah! Tlu'iy know littk' of human nature who talk in this fashion. Tin' 
b('st .('k-meiit among our inak' voters has trieil to luiprovev the shanu'. 
Ilav(^ 'th('y succee'dedV Tiu'.v we're' so apathetic, evwing to re'peate'el fad- 
ure's. that (bvve'rimr Jlill twice? in his messageis trie'd tei iiieluce tin' Legis¬ 
lature' ter eoiaet laws making the suffrage' a duty, a,ml ned merely a right. 
.Vnd wherre'* stremg intliie'ntial men have faik'd, will wemn'ii succee'dV Who 
he're' wemkl wish te) se'e his meithe'r, wdfe err sister, ente'r emr periling place's? 
A ml you D'e'ially be'tlieve? that the most erf the female veite^rs wemkl be proof 
against bribery, ami inteixicants, ami, in time, more; ek^graeling ami iniepii- 
tems e-rimes. d'he'y re'ael the hist eery of woeman -svith false lights, whei can¬ 
not receignize', in her atliliatiem with ])ublic affairs, the' marke'd cause of 
he']- ek't'erie)i‘at:k)n in pe'rsonal chairaete'r. The're are some' few e'xe'e'jiti -ns; 
but fremi De'beerah tei (de'eipatra, a.nel Eiizabe'ith of Engianel, auel (lathariji > 
eif Uiissia, a,ml tei the' jirince'ss claiming the' right ter the threiiK' of Hawaii, 
the're' is a.n inseik'iirt criie'lty, ami a moral elebasement, that shames the 
wea-st male preitligaey. 

Within lu'r eiwn sphere', weiinan’s inllm'iice is beuu'lie'ial and uplifting, 
Wlu'u ambit iem err aceademt has e*arrie'el hea be'yoml tn''r splu're', the' traus- 
fe'r has wremght evil te> man, ami wre'ck to w'emiau. This, Ihe'ii, is my first 
re'asem of eijijieysit iem to feMnak' siilfiiage'—'in the' pre seMit ek'base'd ami ceir 
rni»t cemelitiem eef jieditle-s, I fear that le'imale iiarticipatiem in the' fra.nchise; 
must e'nitail e'emseepieme'cs fatal tee the legitimate Aveirk a.nel elesfciny of 
wemn'ii. I 

jMy se'e'oml I'e’asem is e'lose' ter this. Has nert partisanship in irolitics been 
e*arrie<l alre-aely to a ruinous e'xtre'ine in this cemntryV Is uent onr bewisteel 
na.t'iemal unit.v a lare^e' ami a tie‘'tiern Ha.ve mri. rece'iit Cemgre'sisieriial 
elebaites, anel measure's, atlirmed that Ave' are hoire-lessly eliviek'd inter oppos¬ 
ing industrial camps, anel re'ce'iit politie-al e-erntests pre)V('<l the tierce enmity 
erf emr battling politie-al heists? 1 be'licA'C that emr ]rre>spe'rlty, a.nel vitality, 
de'jre'ml ern the' e-eralitiern anel pa.citieafion erf the'se herstile ferrees. I believe' 
tliat AAO' shernld be' a jrarty to ner k'.gislatiern Avhich werulel te'iiiel further to 
se'parale* ns, anel imavase' the el in erf battle, 

I believe' that erthe-r imri-e vital inti're'sits Avhich cluster nbemt the hermey 
the' church, anel the' se-hererl, elema.ml that emr huge female' po])ulati(on be? 
kept alerof from these rivalrie^s and ceruteMitierus, as a refuge a.nel restraint 


ill lluy (Iny of our diiri'st (listrixss, niul with tho foiwoii.t liojvo tluit their 
mihiaso'd iiitliuuiei' iiiny a puiora-tioii of citizens who may be wiUiii.n' 

to put the nation bivfoiH' tlie individmU, and men and primaiiles ahead of 
Piirty, 

If we cloithe our womi'ii with the fraiiichise, w(' increase a thousand fold 
all the ('vils and injustice and blindness and seltishness of partisanship. 
Into the nation we throw a solvimt that will be felt down in its lowest 
foniKlat ions. Alnudy, with only men to vo-te, the heat of a political fight 
will divide families, and strain a.ml snai) friendships of a. liftMime. Itring 
wonuMi into th(‘ strife, and what home will be secure against discord, and 
wliat friendsliii) saf(‘ from wri'tckagi'? 

The more sacred duties of liomi‘, religion, and ('ducation, will be sacri- 
lici'd to till' more engrossing exciteinmits of pollitics; and we will have a 
groti'spne, ill-formed nation, wh<‘re women are nevi^r mothers, and where 
nuMi Avill knoAV more of the tariff and the election law than of (toil and 
till'' ten com maud immits. That morbid condition is universal enough now 
among nu'u. Do yon want it also to brand women? 

My third reason, Avhich is also my last, though these are only three of a 
sm'ii's wliich might run Into many wiae I the only speaker, is bas(>d upon 
oftlnu’ matm’ial. Tin'' remark- has been made editorially by one of yonr 
journals, that this (tuestion of female sntTrag(‘ is not to be deitermineil liy 
fmnalc' supmioiiity or inferiority as compariHl with males. The issue at 
best is nugallant and ungraK-ions, and yivt I cannoit avoid it. 1 would 
regnd to liiid the (iiu'st.'ion sihtled Avithont a reference to this issue of com¬ 
parative ability. Di'gitiniiaitidy, it iH'ver should be raised; and it would 
not now if women Aviwe not insisting on trespassing on exclusive male ter¬ 
ritory. Dortnn.ati‘ Avould we IX' if we could iiniitate th.i'' gallantry of 
Horace (liandey, Avho, Avhen aski'd, “who Avas the cle\n‘rer, man or 
Avoman?” ri'plieh, “It depends very much on Avhat man or Avoman you 
mean.” 

If the franchis(‘ is conferred on AA'oman, it should co-ordinatel.v confer 
on her th(‘ right to liold anyoflic(‘ for Avhich she may vote. If yon separati^ 
tlu‘ lAVo, female agitators Avill mwi'r sleep till thi'y Avorry yon into grant¬ 
ing thiis substantial siMinence of the franchise. If yon noAV i)ermit her to 
viite. sooner or later this is tlu' very serious condition yon must face. In 
such an event, h(>r s(‘X should bi‘ no bar to her iH'ing a. goAumior, a chief 
Jnstic(‘, United Stall's Senatoi'. or an.y ollicial Avithin tin* jnrisdictiion of 
the iM'ojvh*, or other ai)pointing poAA'icr of this State. If being eligible to 
thesi* otlici's, the motlnw’s and Avife's ambition coA'ets them against the 
[)rot('st of husband and childri'ii—Avhat then? If to preAmnt her election, 
husband and children must vote aga nst. lii'r—Avhat then? If during the 
tenun* of olli(‘e, tin* dntii'S or fniictlons of motlu'rhood demainl her retire- 
—Avhat tin'll? If, in tin* distribution of official patronagi*, sln^ ignore 
husband and sons—AA'hat then? 

Women agitators call the trainh'se, by a gross mis!iomer, a natural 
right. The n'fntation of tin* absurdity lii'S in the obtrusiAm antagonism 
betAVC'im this alh'ged luitiiral right and other rnti natural dutirH. Frances 
UoAvc'r Uobb(', a. AUgorons fi'inah* agitator, confcssics tlu're is a ja'riod in a 
AA'Dinairs life Avhen the duties sin' oavcs her sex forci* her to a complete 
abandonment of the dutii'S she oavcs the commonAA'ealth, Is not this a, 
singular anom;ily? Ilecansi' fi'inale suffragists will not heed the voice 
of natnri* they a.i-e unsexing themselves. 

It is this possibility of fiMiiale otlici'-holders that forces on us the feature 
of fmnale capacity. 

Dr. Wni. A. Ifannmond, the distinguished nerve and brain specialist, 
aftm-* Avriting harshly of tin* original female suffrage agitators as short- 
liaired Avomen and long-haiia'd mi'ii, says that a. Avonian’s brain evolA^es 
emotion rather than intellect; and Avhilst this feature tits her admirablyas 


ii cr(-n1nro biirdeiu'd Avilli tli(‘ ])res'(‘rvatl()ii aii<l liappiiioss of t.lio Inuoaii 
spccic^s, if painfully dis(iunlili(^s Juu* for the steriK'r duties to be i)erfoim(‘d 
by tli'O iiibdleetiial faiciilti(“S. Tlu) Ix'tst Avdfe and iiioflier and sister would 
make llie Avoirst legislator, judge and police. 

'I'be excessive devcdopnicnt of llui emotional in her n(''rv()US system, 
ingrafts on the f(‘ma.le ()rgani7>ation, a neurotic or hysUTical condition, 
winch is the source of much of the female cha-rms when iit is k(‘i)t within 
due rc'Straiints. In emm’g('nci('S, or ditlicult situations, or monumts of (‘X- 
(‘ilement, or umh'i* coiiitinued strain, it is liable to exjdode in viohmt 
paroxysms, when all the menial and physical faculties arc; perverted, and 
thrown into a condition of startling turbulence. Every woman, Iheie- 
foire, carries this power oif irregular, illogical and incongruous action; 
and no one ca.n foretell wlum the explosion will conics 

A woman livc's more; in her emotions, and will judge more; as she fc*els 
than as she thinks. 'She is bcu’cl't of the “judicial mind.” She has no 
idc'a of abstra,cl justice;, illc'ir like's and dislike's are i)aramount with her. 
She; will sa.crilie'e life, duty, family and charaedor, if ne;cessary, to tlie^ man 
she loves; and punish sc'vc'redy those', who, innoce'iit of crime, may have; 
only arousc'd hen* in-e'judlce'S. A man Avill judge of things as tlie'y are 
without re'fereiice' to himsedf. Only tlie exce'ptional woman can do this. 
Me'ii are strong in those virtiu'is that grow out e»f the nature of things— 
women in those thal are found in nu're; seuitiment or right feeling. 

Tlu'se difference's make tlievir union jie'ice'issji.ry. iThe'y Aveae neA'cr in- 
te“nde'd for rivals. Tlu'y are conipl(*'nu;ntary to each other, like; the voice's 
in a choral harmony; and tlu'ir wants nnd diffe''r('-nce'S are the bond evf 
their union. If nature makes them diffeu-, so must the splu'res of their 
action vary. ' 

If an al)normal female a‘nd)ition, blind to the'se essc'iitial and God-gi\n'n 
unliktme>ss(''s, crava'S for activity in an unlu'althy, maseailine tiedd, h't the 
strong, virile opinion of the State, redeuke the ye'arning as it Avould that 
of an unthinking, AvayAvard child. 

(Jladly do I e'ndorse your own re'solution whc'ii you say: 

“ It is our fallH'rs, brothc'rs, husbands ami sons Avho re'iue'semit us at 'the' 
ballot-box. Our fathers and our brotlu'rs love us; our husbands are' oui' 
edioiice a.nd one Avilh us; our sons are' Avhat avc' make themi. ^^'e are con- 
te'id tlial the\v re'ijere'se'nt. us in the corn-lie'ld, on the' baitlh'-tiedd and al the 
l)allot-box, and avo the*ni in the' schoed-roemi, at the fireside' and at the' 
cradle, bedieving our re'pre'Se'iitait ion cAa'ii at the ballot-box to b(' thus 
more full and imiia.rtial than it Avould be AA'ere the auc'aa^s of the' fe'Av who 
AA'isli suffrage adopte'd, contrary to the judgme'id: of the many. 

“We do, therefore', respe'edfully prote'st against any legislation to estal)- 
lish Avoman suffrage, in our land, or in any jiart of it.” 


Anti-Suffrage pam])hle'ts may be obtained at l.”> Elk stree't. Albany, 



At a meeting of the Committee on Suffrage of the New 
York Constitutional Convention, held at the Capitol in Albany, 
on Thursday, June 14th, 1894, Mr. Francis M. Scott of New 
York City, spoke as follows, upon the amendment under con¬ 
sideration by the Committee providing for the elimination of the 
word “male” from Article ii. Section i, of the Constitution : 

“I appear before this Committee as the spokesman of a 
large body of women resident in the county of New York, who 
are seriously and sincerely alarmed at the mere possibility that 
this Convention may be induced to take the first step toward 
the imposition upon the women of this State of new and 
onerous duties and responsibilities. 

In the opinion of those who send me here the experiment 
which you are asked to endorse would be a most dangerous one, 
not only for the State, but for woman herself, and they have 
therefore come forward most unwillingly, but in fulfillment of 
what they regard as an imperative duty, to protest publicly 
against so radical and revolutionary an amendment of our 
fundamental law, as would be implied in the unlimited extension 
of the suffrage to women. 

It is proper at the outset that I should state as briefly as 
possible how it has happened that these women whom I repre- 
.sent, and who shrink from active and personal participation in 
public affairs, have, in apparent contradiction to their own pro¬ 
fessed principles and beliefs, been moved to take part in the 
public discussion of a question of this character. 

The agitation for woman suffrage is no new matter in 
this country, and there are few of us present to-night who can 
remember the time when there were not some women, with 
active, restless minds, who clamored for the right to vote. 


2 


Never, until the present year, however, has the agitation 
for this extension of the suffrage made sufficient headway in 
this State, as to appear really dangerous, or to seem to warrant 
active opposition. 

Early in the past winter, indeed almost as soon as the 
members of this Convention had been elected, certain very well 
known, very estimable and very able ladies in the City of New 
York began to solicit petitions addressed to this Convention, 
asking it to recommend to the people an amendment to the first 
section of Article ii of the Constitution, to consist of the elimi¬ 
nation of the word “male” from that section. 

At a time like the present, when the unrestful spirit of 
Socialism is abroad throughout the land, it is not surprising that 
they were able to attract to their support many men and women 
of acknowledged intellectual capacity, many of the women who 
have acquired a certain kind of prominence by their constant 
participation in all kinds of public discussion, some women, who 
by means of their husbands’ wealth and their own social promi¬ 
nence had become well-known, byname, in the community, and 
not a few of that always considerable body of people, who con¬ 
stantly seek some change in the existing condition of affairs, 
and who, unthinkingly, believe that whatever is new, must for 
that reason alone be progressive and desirable. 

A large number of public and quasi-public meetings were 
held, many speeches were delivered and pamphlets written, and 
a vast amount of newspaper prominence was obtained. 

For a long time the suffragists, as they have come to be 
called, had the field to themselves—the subject became the theme 
of discussion in drawing rooms and over dinner tables, and 
women’s suffrage became the “social fad ” of the hour. 

At length, only about three weeks before this Convention 
met, a few earnest and thoughtful women in the City of New 
York, became aroused to the possible danger that unless some 
positive steps were taken to present the other side of the question 


3 


the agitation in favor of the amendment might succeed by default. 
They realized how difficult it has become in these days for man 
to refuse to woman anything that she asks at his hands, and 
they feared that if this Convention heard only from the women 
who wished to participate in the politics of the State, it might 
be misled into the belief that these petitioners represented the 
sentiments of the women generally. 

They also appreciated the fact that many of the advocates 
of female suffrage were women of signal ingenuity and ability, 
well primed with specious and plausible arguments, and that 
you gentlemen, having man3^ matters of great importance to 
consider and act upon within a very limited time, were entitled 
to all possible assistance in reaching a conclusion upon a ques¬ 
tion of such vital importance, not only to womankind, but to 
the community. 

These women, therefore, who were opposed to the ex¬ 
tension of the suffrage and who felt very strongly and seriously 
upon the subject quietly prepared and circulated the protest 
which has been laid before 3^011. 

They refrained from imitating the methods adopted b3’ the 
suffragists. They held no meetings, made no speeches, con¬ 
ducted no campaign. 

They made no effort to impress the Convention by the 
mere number of names attached to their protest. 

They accepted the signatures of no men, of no women 
under twenty-one years of age, of no aliens or non-residents of 
the State. - 

The results has exceeded their most sanguine expecta¬ 
tions. 

Notwithstanding the very short time allowed for the 
circulation of their protest, notwithstanding the unaggressive 
methods adopted by them, notwithstanding the reluctance of 
many women to take even so much part in public affairs as 
would be involved in signing a document of this character, they 


4 


have already been able to lay before you from the city of New 
York the names of nearly as many women—within three or 
four thousand as many—as the suffragists have been able to 
present from that city after months of effort and an elaborate 
and aggressive campaign, and to-day I have brought to Albany' 
the names of nearly a thousand women in addition to those 
already presented. 

Nor had these women of New York, until within a very 
few days, contemplated the presentation of any oral arguments 
or addresses to you. 

They have selected and sent to each member of the Con¬ 
vention some of the best literature upon the subject, in which 
the unanswerable arguments against female suffrage are ably 
and convincingly stated. 

At the very last moment, however, it has been deemed 
due to 3"ourselves that the side of the Anti-Suffragists, as they 
are termed, should be orally and formally presented to 3^011. 

I shall, however, be very brief in what I have to sa3", 
contenting m3^self rather with suggesting, than elaborating a 
few of the most serious and apparent objections to the proposed 
amendment. 

You will not accuse me of seeking to instruct you in 
your duties, if I begin by quoting from the leading advocate of 
the amendment, a sentence which, in my opinion, every mem¬ 
ber of this Convention should keep ever clearly in mind. 

Mrs. Jacobi ver3^ justly said to you a few evenings ago 
that ‘ ‘ this Convention is no revolutionary tribunal assembled 
to sap the foundation, or overthrow the structure of existing 
society.” 

If then, it can be made clear to you that this proposed 
amendment is essentially revolutionary, that its inevitable ten¬ 
dency must be to sap the foundations and overthrow the struc¬ 
ture of existing societ3^, that it would bestow apparent authority 
upon those who lack the power to enforce respect for their 


5 


authority, that it would tend to destroy that inter-dependence 
of men and women for which nature has wisely provided and 
which alone makes social development and progress possible, 
that it would be, to quote the report of Horace Greeley to the 
last Constitutional Convention, ‘ ‘ An innovation revolutionary 
and sweeping, openly at war with the distribution of functions 
between the sexes as venerable and pervading as government 
itself and involving radical transformations in social and do¬ 
mestic life ”— 

If you shall be convinced that this proposed amendment 
is of this character, then your duty with respect to it will be 
clear and easy. 

What then is the proposition now laid before you and for 
which your approval is demanded ? 

It is that man, upon whom from time immemorial has 
devolved the duty of making and enforcing laws for the protec¬ 
tion of society, shall now abdicate his position, and, potentially 
at least, turn over to the women the power of making the laws, 
reserving to himself only the responsibility of enforcing those 
laws which she may make, for while it is possible by amend¬ 
ment of the Constitution to confer upon women the power to 
make laws, a higher power than even this Convention has 
denied to her the power of enforcing the law. 

I have said that the adoption of this amendment involves 
man’s abdication of his right to make laws, and the statement 
is none too strong. The women always outnumber the men, 
and owing to the itinerant character of many of man’s avoca¬ 
tions the voting women would always largely outnumber the 
voting men. 

It may be that we should seldom see all the women on one 
side of a political question, but we might easily do so, especially 
upon a question that appealed to sentiment or emotion, and so 
as I have said, potentially at least, the proposed amendment 
involves the abdication by man of the power of government. 


6 


If that be not revolutionary in its tendencies, I know not 
what could be. 

We have all become so accustomed to defer to woman — 
to accede to her slightest wish — to extend to her all the 
privileges that her sex seems to demand — to share with her 
everything in which she desires to share, that we approach this 
question with a sort of half formed feeling, that we may, in 
some way, be deemed ungracious and ungenerous if we refuse 
to admit her to participation in the suffrage. 

But as upon man devolves the power to change the 
fundamental law of the State, so upon man rests the responsi¬ 
bility of exercising that power in the interest and for the benefit 
of the community, and it is his duty to approach the considera¬ 
tion of this question with all seriousness and without a trace of 
sentimentality. 

Before the men of this State consent to surrender to 
women the responsibility for government and the power to 
change at will its fundamental law, before even we consent to 
share that power and responsibility with them, we are bound 
to be fully assured: 

First: That to do so will be of benefit to the whole 
community, and 

Second: That there are certain definite benefits to be 
secured through woman’s suffrage, which cannot otherwise be 
secured. 

The great and unsuperable objection to the extension of 
the suffrage to women is fundamental and functional. 

It rests upon the difference that nature has established 
between men and women. 

The basis of government is force — its stability rests 
upon its physical power to enforce its law. Since the world 
began no government has ever sustained itself for any length 
of time unless it controlled the physical force of the nation. 


7 


To imagine a government unbacked by the physical 
power necessary to enforce its laws, is to imagine an anomaly— 
which must soon develop into anarchy. 

And it is for this reason that in all times and all coun¬ 
tries the government has been entrusted to the men, because 
they alone are able, if necessary, to fight for its maintenance. 

I am well aware that the advocates of female suffrage refuse to 
admit the truth of the proposition that the stability of 
government is dependant upon physical force—they cannot 
admit it, since to do so would be to admit the weakness of their 
cause. But it is true, nevertheless, and the more you think of 
it, the more you turn it over in your minds—the more you 
consider it from every side—the more certainly must you come 
to recognize its truth. 

The suffragists characterize such a proposition as brutal 
and revolting—they assert that with the advent of female 
suffrage human nature and the whole theory of government 
will change; that a government of reason will supersede a 
government of force—that bad men and women will consent to 
be persuaded to observe the law, and that it will no longer be 
necessary to compel them to do so. 

Indeed one of the most enthusiastic, and least logical, of 
the advocates of female suffrage, ventures the assertion that 
already there is going on all over the civilized world ‘ ‘a continuous 
evolution in the form of government from the military type to 
the industrial type—from government by involuntary co¬ 
operation to government by voluntary co-operation—from gov¬ 
ernment by force to government by discussion.” 

Fine words, indeed but far at variance with the facts. 

This is still the age of Bismarck—Europe still resembles 
nothing more than an armed camp—the echoes of the rebellion 
have not yet died away, and the pension list still remains to 
remind us that the government, even of pacific America, can, 
upon occasion, maintain itself by force. 


8 


If we are passing beyond the age when government 
must rely upon force for its stability, wh}' do we go on year by 
year developing and improving our militia — why do we erect 
armories, and not debating halls, why in all the centres of 
population do we continue to organize and drill bodies of 
police ? 

Because we know — you and I know that laws, that 
cannot be enforced, are worse than useless — that to make laws, 
and not provide at the same time the means of compelling 
obedience to them, would be to bring government into con¬ 
tempt—to invite a condition of anarchy — to endanger the 
safety of the individual, the sanctity of the home, the perma¬ 
nency of all our most cherished institutions. In short, to call 
down destruction upon the community that it is our duty to 
defend. 

Herein, therefore, lies the fundamental difference between 
men and women — herein is to be found the ultimate and 
immutable reason why men should vote, and women should 
not. It is simply because men can fight and women cannot. 

This fundamental fact may be momentarily lost sight of 
in the clouds of emotional and sentimental rhetoric, but it is 
your duty as serious men, charged with a grave responsibility, 
to see to it that you do not permit your vision to be obscured 
by either emotion or sentiment. You are bound to look the 
facts in the face and to legislate in the light of the facts, for 
the benefit of the whole community. 

The interests of the community clearly require that the 
law should have behind it sufficient force to compel revSpect and 
observance. 

We talk about the “strong arm of the law”—where 
would be the strength of that arm, if it were only that of weak, 
non-combative woman ? 

The reason why you and I, Mr. Chairman, are entitled 
to participate in the governient, is not because we are intelli- 


9 


gent, or educated, or able to pay taxes. We may be none of 
these and still be entitled to vote. It is because we have back 
of our votes the physical force necessary to enforce the laws we 
help to make. 

But laws passed by the vote of women would have no 
force behind them, and consequently could be disregarded with 
impunity. 

The reason why we have adopted, as the foundation of 
our political system, the rule that the will of the majority must 
prevail over that of the minority, is that both majority and 
minority recognize the fact that the majority can, if the min¬ 
ority rebel, force them into acquiesence. 

But if the majority were all women and the minority 
were all men, this would not be true, the minority would soon 
cease to pay any regard to the will of the majority, and our 
whole theory of government would be overturned, and govern¬ 
ment itself cease to be government. 

The exception to the general rule that man is combatant, 
and women non-combatant in no wise affect its application. 

I concede that some women are physically able to fight, 
and that some men are not. I recognize the existence of 
mannish women, and of womanish men—but in discussing a 
question of this character we must consider the rule, rather 
than the exceptions, and even the most ardent suffragist will 
not venture to assert that the average woman equals in physical 
power the average man. 

I repeat that the only question you have a right to deter¬ 
mine is whether, in the interest of both the sexes, it would be 
conducive to good government to bestow the franchise upon 
women. 

In considering that question you cannot close your eyes 
to the fact that the result of such a measure would practically 
be to bestow upon women power without responsibility, leaving 
to the men merely the responsibility without power. 


lO 


I am sure that you must conclude that an experiment so 
revolutionary as that must endanger the welfare and very ex¬ 
istence of the State. 

If there were any advantages to accrue either to the 
State, or to woman herself, from the adoption of this amend¬ 
ment, which cannot be obtained without it, it might be your 
duty to weigh those advantages against the very many and 
palpable dis-advantages. 

If there be in fact any such advantages, the burden of 
pointing them out, and proving them, clearly rests upon the pro¬ 
ponents of this radical measure. 

I have read with some care all the obtainable essays and 
speeches in behalf of the amendment, and have sought in vain 
for the statement of a single certain, well defined benefit which 
is to result either to the State or to woman kind. Glittering 
generalties, fantastic .speculations, socialistic theories, populistic 
fallacies, I find plenty, but I find the statement of no wrong to 
woman that man has refused to redress—of no provision for her 
benefit that he has refused to make—I find no business or pro¬ 
fession closed to her—no barrier interposed to her development 
and advance in any direction in which her sex permits her 
to direct her footsteps. 

The law of this State already accords to women, as it 
rightl}" should, many special privileges and immunities, and 
has removed the trammels which in years gone by confined her 
freedom of action. 

If there still be grievances to be redressed, of which we 
hear no mention, it is to the Legislature that appeal should be 
made, and until it has shown, as it has not yet done, an indis¬ 
position to act upon any reasonable complaint, there will be no 
necessity for an appeal to the ballot box. 

It is true that it is said by some theorists that the possess¬ 
ion of the privilege of voting would enable working women to 


command higher wages and greater consideration from their 
employers. 

If that were true, it would seem that the posvsession of 
the franchise by men should by this time have raised to a satis- 
factor}" figure the wages of working men. But we all know 
that it has not yet had that effect. 

To-day the newspapers are filled with accounts of labor 
strikes all over the country, and every striker is a voter. 

It is true that among male workers organization and co¬ 
operation have in many industries increased wages and lessened 
the hours of labor, but these concessions have been compelled 
becaUvSe the male workers have possessed that which female 
vrorkers do not and cannot possess, physical force to back up 
their demands. Practically all these concessions have been 
gained by strikes, or the fear of .strikes, and back of every 
strike is a possible resort to physical force ; not perhaps suffici¬ 
ently strong to defy the law for very long, but in many cases 
strong enough to make compromi.se cheaper and safer than battle. 

But it is claimed that the exercise of the suffrage is a 
natural right inherent in every individual, and that to deny it 
to woman is to refuse arbitrarily that which she has a right to 
demand. 

No proposition can be more at variance with the theory 
and history of political government. There is no such thing as 
an inherent natural right of an individual to vote. The right 
to say who may and who may not vote has always remained, 
and must always remain with the State, and, in the nature of 
things, must be exercised with reference to the interest, not of 
the individual, but of the State. 

In no proper or exact sense is the .suffrage a right at all, 
or even a privilege. 

It is a duty imposed upon the individual citizen because 
it is believed that its exercise by him will make for the best 
interest of the whole community. 


12 


And even if it were, as it is not, a personal, natural, in¬ 
dividual right, it would still be perfectly competent and proper 
to deny it to woman, if by granting it to her the safety or sta¬ 
bility of the State would be imperilled. 

There is no individual right so sacred, that the State may 
not, for the benefit of the whole community, deprive the indi¬ 
vidual of it. 

The right of property—of liberty—of life itself may be 
destroyed if the interest of the community demands it. Private 
property may be taken for public use—the writ of habeas corpus 
may be suspended—men may be drafted into the army and sent, 
unwilling, to meet death upon the field of battle, if the welfare 
of the State—of the whole community—needs the sacrifice. 

It is urged that to refuse the ballot to women is to render 
them liable to taxation without representation, and this is pro¬ 
claimed as a gross injustice. To sustain this plea, the Com¬ 
mittee has, as I understand, been furnished with elaborate 
tables purporting to show the amount of property in various 
countries owned by women and subject to tax. 

But those who advance this argument exhibit their entire 
lack of understanding of the thories, both of taxation and of 
suffrage, and thus demonstrate that they, at least, are not yet 
prepared to participate in the suffrage. 

The duty, or right if you prefer the word, of voting is in 
no .sense dependent, in this State, and has not been for many 
years, upon the fact that the voter pays taxes or owns taxable 
property. 

We have founded our government on manhood suffrage, 
and have conferred the voting power upon our male citizens, 
not because they own more or less property, or any property at 
all, but because they are men. 

The women would, indeed, have a right to complain if 
we so far differentiated them from their husbands, their brothers 


13 


and their sons as to confer upon them alone a limited right of 
suffrage restricted by a property qualification. 

Nor do we levy taxes as an equivalent for the suffrage, 
or even in proportion to the population. New York pays more 
taxes than Albany, not because New York contains a larger 
voting population than Albany, and is represented by more 
senators and assemblymen, but because the value of the taxable 
property in New York is greater than the value of the taxable 
property in Albany. 

Taxes are the involuntar)^ contributions levied and col¬ 
lected by the State for the protection, benefit and advancement 
of the whole community. They are levied alike and in the 
same proportion upon the property of voters and non-voters—of 
aliens and citizens—of infants and adults—of men and women. 

In short there is no relation whatever, in fact, or theory 
between taxation and the voting power. 

I have already pointed out that the advocates of the 
amendment now before you, have failed to indicate any positive 
definite advantage to be gained by the extension of the suffrage 
to women. 

They refuse to assume the burden of proof which justly 
should rest upon their shoulders, and content themselves with 
arguing that no harm is likely to follow upon the proposed ex¬ 
periment. 

They undertake to wage an affirmative contest by assum¬ 
ing a negative attitude. 

But if needs be we are prepared to meet them upon this 

field. 

The change in our political system contemplated by this 
amendment is the most far-reaching and radical that has ever 
been attempted in this State. 

It is proposed to interject into the political life of this 
State, a body of voters, larger than the whole number now en¬ 
titled to vote, and composed, for this main part, of persons 


H 

wholly untrained and inexperienced in public affairs, and who 
from the very nature of their duties and occupations have had, 
and will have little opportunity to educate themselves in the 
many complex questions that most constantly arise in the gov- 
erment of a State like ours. 

I beg you to remember that you must consider the prob¬ 
able effect of extending the franchise to all women, not alone to 
the exceptionally intellectual and brillant women who have ad- 
drevSsed you on this subject. 

They constitute but a small fraction of their sex, and 
are by no means representative, intellectually, of the great body 
of women in this State—of the women who are engrossed by 
the cares and duties of maternity and wifehood—of the women 
who find their home duties so exacting that they have little time 
for political reading and discussion—of the women whose w^ak- 
ing hours are fully and happily filled in rearing their children 
for the State, and keeping homes attractive for sons and hus¬ 
bands. 

Should we not find the average woman divided into two 
classes. 

One which, holding on to her home work, voted unin- 
telligently and blindly, and the other gaining, perhaps, political 
intelligence at the cost of a neglected home. 

Would the State derive benefit from either of those 
classes ? 

I know that I am referring to what is an unpopular fact 
with some female suffragists, when I speak of the home duties 
of woman, as a possible barrier to her intelligent participation 
in politics. I have observed a disposition on the part of many 
of their writers and speakers to resent the suggestion that 
woman’s especial duty in the world lies within the confines of 
the home. 

But we must deal with the facts of life as nature has 
made them for us, and nature has imposed upon women certain 


15 


burdens and duties, which we men cannot relieve them of, even 
by an amendment of the Constitution. 

The chief of these is maternity, and upon the heels of 
maternity follows the care of children. 

The very existence of the State depends upon the birth 
and care of children, and nature has devolved that function upon 
woman, while the law, following nature, has imposed upon man 
the duty of supporting and protecting the mothers and the 
children. Hence if any advocate of female suffrage is disposed 
to quarrel with the arrangement which relegates woman to the 
home duties, her quarrel must be with nature—not with man. 

And then there is another large class of women who 
cannot be left out of account. The densely ignorant, who have 
neither the education, the mental capacity, nor the desire to 
acquire political intelligence. Will the extension of the suffrage 
to them make for the benefit of the community ? 

It is no answer to say that there is a correspondingly 
large body of ignorant and unintelligent men who are now en¬ 
titled to vote. It surely cannot be seriously argued that there 
is less to be apprehended from two unintelligent votes than from 
one—from two purchasable votes than from one—yet that prop¬ 
osition must be accepted to justify the extension of the suffrage 
to such women as these. 

And then we have, at least in the cities, that large class 
of unfortunate women who live outside the law, numbering 
from forty to sixty thousand in New York alone. Would 
municipal politics become cleaner and better if all these women 
were permitted to vote—and you may be entirely sure that 
every one of them would vote—would be compelled to vote. 

You gentlemen of the Constitutional Convention know 
already, better than most of us can, that there are yet many 
unsolved problems arising from universal manhood suffrage, 
especially with regard to the government of large cities. 


i6 

That they will all be solved in time I presume none of us 

doubt. 

Some of them you will doubtless solve, or at least sug¬ 
gest a solution for, before you adjourn. 

Do you think that you would be fulfilling the Trust im¬ 
posed upon you by the people, if you were now to complicate 
and multiply these problems by doubling the suffrage—by ex¬ 
tending it to a large body of untrained and unready persons, 
wholly lacking in political experience. 

I have endeavored to point out to you some of the dangers 
to the State and to woman herself which would attend the adop¬ 
tion of this amendment, and I have called your attention to the 
fact that no one has yet been able to indicate one single positive, 
certain advantage to either that may be expected to revSult 
from it. 

I cannot help thinking, however, that all the discussion 
and consideration now given to the subject is premature. 

Surely nothing, but an overmastering public necessity, 
could justify the imposition of political duties upon the women 
of this State, until they themselves have expressed a desire to 
undertake those duties. 

No such necessity exists, and there is no evidence whatever 
that the majority of the women, or even a respectable minority, 
have the slightest desire for the ballot. 

The total male vote of the State at the last presidential 
election was over 1,300,000. We all know that a considerable 
number of men neglect their political duties, and refrain from 
voting at all, and we also know that the women exceed the 
men in number by an appreciable percentage. It is fair to 
assume therefere, that this amendment would affect not less 
than 1,500,000 women. 

Up to June ist., the whole number of women’s signatures 
attached to petitions in favor of this amendment, including 


7 


those from the city of New York was barely 44,000, even allow¬ 
ing the claims of the suffragists, for I do not suppose that any¬ 
one else has counted them. Not more than three per cent of 
the whole number of women to be affected. And this too after 
months of a most vigorous and active campaign. 

Does this serve to convince you that the women of this 
State are really anxious for the adoption of the amendment. 

Is it worth while to spend valuable time upon the consider¬ 
ation of an amendment of this character, when only an insignif¬ 
icant minority of the women of the State care enough for it to 
ask for its adoption. 

Will it not be time enough to consider the question seri¬ 
ously when we find at least a majority of the women asking for 
the imposition of the suffrage. 

I beg that you will not be led away by the specious plea 
that it can do no harm to submit the question for determination 
by the people. 

It would do much harm. 

There will be other questions of really serious import to 
the welfare of the State, upon which the people will have to 
vote. It would be little short of a crime to distract their atten¬ 
tion from the consideration of these subjects, by laying before 
them a fanciful proposition, foredoomed to defeat. 

You cannot shift your responsibility upon the shoulders 
of the people—to attempt to do so would be cowardly. 

Your clear duty is to recommend—not merely to suggest, 
and unless you are convinced that the public interests require 
the adoption of this amendment, you cannot in good conscience 
dignify it with your endorsement. 

I cannot more fittingly close than by again reminding you 
of the wise words of Mrs. Jacobi, that “ this convention is no 
revolutionary tribunal assembled to sap the foundations or over¬ 
throw the structure of existing society.” 


i8 

Mr. Scott also read to the Committee, the following letter 
from Mr. Abram S. Hewitt of New York City ; 

New York, June 13th, 1894. 

My dear Mr. Scott:— 

I am very sorry that it will not be possible for me to per¬ 
form the service requested by the Woman’s Anti-Suffrage Com¬ 
mittee, but I am glad to learn that your engagements will 
permit you to appear before the Committee of the Constitutional 
Convention and present the case from their point of view. I 
regard the subject as of the greatest possible importance, and 
therefore venture to call your attention to one or two points 
which appear to me to be decisive of the whole matter. 

The State adopts a constitution in order to secure the 
greatest good of the greatest number. In order that this result 
may be achieved, justice must be the basis upon which the 
structure is reared, but inasmuch as in all human contrivances 
there is necessarily a conflict of principle, the framers of the 
constitution are compelled to regard only the larger elements 
involved in each application of the principles of government, 
and to neglect all minor considerations affecting only small por¬ 
tions of the community. 

In our country suffrage is made the basis of government, 
and step by step we have practically arrived at manhood .suffrage 
as best calculated to ensure general acquiescence. There are, 
undoubtedly, evils inherent in manhood suffrage, but public 
opinion has arrived at the conclusion that these evils are of less 
moment than the denial of suffrage to those who are without 
education and without property. It is by no means clear that 
the best interests of society have been promoted and secured by 
this extension of the suffrage to all classes of males. 

The history of the discussion of this question and present 
status in the public mind go to show that suffrage has never 
been and is not now regarded as a personal right or even as a 


19 


privilege. It is rather to be placed in the category of a duty to 
be performed. No doubt public opinion has been influenced by 
the fact that all men are liable to military duty, and inasmuch 
as government in the last analysis rests upon force, it seems to 
have been decided that all who are liable to be called upon to 
fight should also be compelled to vote, because the law, being 
the expression of the public will, must be enforced by the mili¬ 
tary power of the State. The conclusion which has been 
reached appears to me to be based solely upon public policy and 
not upon any fundamental principle of justice. I am at a loss 
to perceive upon what ground any individual can claim the right 
to vote, but I can well understand that the community at large 
shall impose this obligation upon all who are likely to be called 
upon to bear arms in support of the law. 

If I am right in this view, the whole claim for woman’s 
suffrage falls to the ground. In the very nature of the case 
the}" cannot be called upon to enforce the law, and therefore 
there is no reason why they should be compelled to take part 
in the election of representatives who are to make the law, or 
of officers who are to administer it. To impose this duty upon 
them is to place them in a false position. Nature has not en¬ 
dowed them with the qualities required for the support and de¬ 
fence of the State. Their duties lie in another direction, 
equally honorable, and much more important. While un¬ 
doubtedly there are among women many who would exercise 
the right of suffrage with more intelligence than the majority 
of men, yet the majority of women feel that they have no mis¬ 
sion in that direction, and they do not desire to have the bur¬ 
den of government imposed upon them in addition to the 
other burdens which nature requires them to bear. Even if 
there should be a clear expression of opinion (as there is not) 
in favor of .securing the right of suffrage, the question would 
still remain, whether the welfare of the State would be promoted 
by such an extension of the voting population. This is a ques- 


20 


tion of practical politics, in which each man has a right to form 
his own judjment, and must, in the nature of the case, do so. 

After carefully considering all the arguments advanced 
by the advocates of woman’s suffrage, I am forced to the con¬ 
clusion that their case has not yet been made out, and I do not 
think from the organic difference between men and women that 
it will ever be shown to be for the advantage of women that they 
should be forced to take part in political controversies. In fact, 
I think it would be a great misfortune to them as well as to the 
human race. 

Very truly yours, 

Abram S. Hewitt. 


Francis M. Scott, Esq., 


EXTRACTS FROM ADDRESSES 

OF 

The Rt. Rev. Wm. Croswell Doane, D. D., 

BISHOP OF ALBANY. 

To the classes graduated from St. Agnes’ School, Albany. 

June 6th, 1894 and June 6th, 1895. 


Published by the Albany Anti-Suffrage Association. 
1898. 









From the Address of 1894 


There must be individuality ; the distinct character which dif¬ 
ferentiates man from man, or machine from machine. For each is 
“ after its kind.” And there is no waste of power so great, as when 
one loses sight of this and sets the day laborer to adjust the niceties 
of the chronometer, or puts the poet behind the plough. This is the 
critical question of all. The power of a “Reaper” to tie up 
sheaves with their own straw, with a delicacy of machinery alive 
almost to its finger ends, would not be proven, if it were set to break 
stones on the road. Nor would the capacity of the trip hammer be 
tested, if it were used to drive the needle of the sewing machine. 
What is it for ? “ What wilt thou have me to do ? ” Purpose as the 

test of power ; object, intention, place and kind of work ; this is 
what I mean by individuality. “What she could;” “what she 
had;” “what I can.” I am sure that there never was a more im¬ 
portant time in all the world, to emphasize, and drive home into 
the minds and consciences of women, this most important lesson. 
We are living in a period of reaction, and reaction always means 
a tendency to violent extremes. The slowly working leaven of 
Christianity for eighteen hundred years, has been lifting women up 
from the low level into which they fell in Eve, to the higher lines of 
life and service to which they rose in Mary. One by one, openings 
and opportunities for congenial and convenient service have been 
opened up to her. One by one, the bars of the cage have been let 
down, and the barriers of foolish custom have been taken away, 
which hindered and held her back from openings and opportunities 
of usefulness. And one by one, the false restraints and unwise dis¬ 
criminations have been done away ; until to-day, by the common 
consent, by the Christianized instinct, by the chivalrous endeavor 
of men, womanhood—and nowhere more than in America—stands 
fairly out upon that position of correlation and coequality with men 
which really was the purpose of Almighty God in the double crea- 
ation ; which in no sense contradicts the divine intention of the pri¬ 
macy of the first created, and the subordination of the second • but 
which utterly destroys, and does away with, the false theory of 
superiority and sovereignty on the one side, as meaning inferiority 



and subjection on the other. And now the world is full of agita¬ 
tions, which would destroy, if they could be carried out, that ex¬ 
quisite balance which the revealed purpose of God, and the im¬ 
planted and inherent differences between men and women, indicate 
as the wise and true relation between the two. Coequality, side-by- 
sideness, divided sovereignty, the ww/z^^^/superiority and subordination 
of influence and control, the interdependence of the “man who is 
by the woman and “the woman who is of the man;” these are 
not only truths and theories, but facts and realities ; which can not 
be forgotten or disregarded without serious injury and loss. Nobody 
who reads the record of the Revelation rightly, or studies history or 
examines the experience of his own life, can fail to feel that what¬ 
ever distinctions and differences there may be between the kind of 
mind, of capacity, of character between the two sexes, there are no 
differences whatever in the degree. But it is the falsest kind of logic 
which argues, that, because the two sexes are equal in the sight of 
God, therefore, they are interchangeable. All that the man can do, 
the woman can not do. All that the woman can do, the man can 
not do. And, therefore, the talk to-day of “woman’s rights,” 
apart from the falseness of the application of the word—for the 
rights of either man or woman are fewer and far less important than 
their duties—has this inherent fallacy ; that it presupposes that be¬ 
cause their rights are equal, therefore they are the same. Surely, if 
one takes the other and the better word, it is plain to the blindest, 
that the duties of men and women are not the same ; that the trend 
of their tastes and capabilities is different ; and that if the women 
are to do the men’s duties, their own duties must be left undone, or 
done by those who are unfitted for and incapable of their discharge. 
Nothing is wilder or stranger, than the misconceptions and dispro¬ 
portionateness of all this theory. It is contradicted by the whole 
material world in which we live ; and in which, its own functions 
are given and its own duties assigned to every separate plant and 
tree and animal. Nor could a wilder confusion be produced than if, 
by some blind force, these unthinking and unreasoning things should 
set themselves to tasks, which have not been assigned them ; and for 
which they are not intended by their creation. And why, the highest 
order of created things, to whom Almighty God has given not only 
the consciousness of their peculiar and different capacities, but the 
plain and evident ability of recognizing the fact and reasoning just 
why these lines of differences are drawn, should prove itself duller 
and more stupid than the inanimate creation, is difficult to see. 
Earnestly I beg that this lesson of the personal pronoun “I”-*-which 
never in any language changes sex because of the equal individuality 
of both sexes must be acknowledged as the fundamental prin¬ 
ciple of character—may plant itself deeply in your conscience. You 



may turn into the feminine gender that great sentence, “I can do all 
that may become a womaii; who dares do more is none.” You can 
realize all this by the divinely implanted instincts of your nature, by 
the limitations or the enlargements of your capacity, by the oppor¬ 
tunities and occasions of your providential place in life. And that 
will be the clue, which you may safely follow, as indicating the lines 
along which every faculty of your nature is to be set, with utmost 
intensity and directness of aim, to do “your duty in the state of life 
into which it shall please God to call you.” 

I am urging the recognition of such limitations as God has set, 
first in your sex, which are written in laws so plain and facts so irre¬ 
sistible that only the blindest can fail to read and see them. The 
utter misconception of equality of position, as though it meant 
sameness of duty, between men and women, is among the facile 
follies and the fatal fallacies of the age. Facing great evils, moved 
in some instances by high motives, women who used to be quiet and 
content to stand in their lot, are joining in the wretched unrest of 
the effort, which, until recently, was in the hands of wild and un¬ 
womanly fanatics, to unsex themselves and unsettle the peace of the 
household, and the prosperity of the world. I have a general dis¬ 
like and distrust of the term woman in the abstract. And in the 
manner of its use it is most confusing. There are women arid 
women, as there are men and men. And the fond imagination 
that the evils of unqualified suffrage given to men, which are the 
most dangerous element in our American political world to-day, can 
be cured by extending the evil to unqualified women, is the strangest 
delusion that ever possessed the human mind. If it should be per¬ 
mitted, which God forefend, the abstract wojiian may rejoice, but it 
will be in the spirit of the maniac, who has laid waste the homes and 
marred the happiness and murdered the hopes of wome?i. Privilege, 
courtesy, chivalry, respect, deference, consideration, will have 
melted away. And there will come instead unseemly contests, selfish¬ 
ness, the bitterness of partisanship, the dregs of strife and corruption, 
incrimination and the demoralization of the deepest and highest and 
dearest relations of society : while in its political effect it will only 
multiply corrupt and irresponsible ballots, not to equal, but to out¬ 
weigh the intelligent suffrage of reputable women. Nothing will be 
altered in results. Nothing will be gained in the issues. And the 
irreclaimable mischief will have left its blight and scar on our social 
life. Two-handed humanity (that is the figure of the man and the 
woman in the body politic) has a right hand and a left hand, each 
equal to the other, each needful to the other. But the hand that is 
nearest the heart, the woman, is not used, and is not meant to be 
used, to grasp the sword, the pen, the reins ; nor to seize the rough 


difficulties and wring out of them the stern successes, of the strife. 
They are both hands. They are equally hands. Each is imperfect 
without the other, but their functions are apart and different. Learn 
the divine, the human, the instinctive, the evident limitations of your 
sex. And when you have filled out with “ all you can'" the sphere 
of your allotted service, you will have no time, nor strength, nor 
desire to reach out for other work to do. 


From the Address of 1895 


One gets sick and tired of the way in which the talk of woman’s 
vocation fills the air, not merely in the wild vagaries of its blatant 
assumptions, but in the parade and push of its claims for recognition 
of what are called “its rights. ” I have had occasion here, a year 
ago, to say what wrong to womanhood these women’s rights would 
be. And I have no desire to recall a word, to shade down any state¬ 
ment, or to abate a jot of effort to protect the silent many from the 
noisy few. For the agitators are really in the minority. Number¬ 
less names on these modern “millenary petitions’’ mean only the 
thoughtless and good-natured yielding to persistent pursuit; just as 
legislative majority votes stand, in not a few instances, for a mis¬ 
taken courtesy or an unmanly cowardice. I believe that God will 
yet save this State and Nation, from the aggravated miseries of an 
enlarged, unqualified suffrage, which, in its universality of male 
voters, is our most threateningjdanger to-day. But if we are to be 
visited by this infliction, as a well-earned punishment for many 
national sins, then I believe that, when we have tasted its bitterness, 
we shall]be brought back, perhaps through anarchy and revolution, 
to a democracy, which shall demand, for its existence, government 
by men, whomjeducation and actual Americanism of vital interest in 
the Nation qualify to govern. Meanwhile, when a new Bible shall 
have been translated into a denial of the original record of creation— 
a really “reversed Scripture,’’ as one once called “the revised 
version’’—when Constitutions shall have been altered, to disturb the 
equipoise of the relation between man and woman ; when mother¬ 
hood shall be replaced by mannishness ; when neglected homes shall 
furnish candidates for mismanaged offices ; when money shall buy 
the votes of women, as it does now themselves; when the fires of 
political discord shall be lighted on the hearthstone of domestic 
peace ; when the arrogant assertion of demanded rights shall have 
destroyed the instinctive chivalry of conceded courtesies ; when 
“woman,” as has been well said, “once the superior, has become the 
equal of man; ” then the reaped whirlwind of some violent political 
reaction will be gathered “in tears,” by those who are sowing the 




wind, in the mad “joy” of the Petroleuse of the French revolutions. 
The vocation of womanhood is the highest and the holiest in the 
world. Guard it, my dear children, in your own selves, from the 
desecration that would drag it into the publicity and prostitutions 
of political strife. Year by year, as the centuries have gone on since 
the great Partheno-Genesis of humanity, its highness and its holiness 
have been more and more made clear. Apart from, and in spite of, 
all the violence of agitation, the duties, the opportunities and the 
privileges of women have opened out before them : service to the 
State, in the training of boys and the moulding of men ; in influenc¬ 
ing great reforms ; in organizing charity ; in elevating education ; 
in the protected ministries of mercy to the sick, the poor, the fallen ; 
in the adorning and sanctifying of homes. But the shoulder that is 
unfitted for the musket, and the hand that was not made to guide the 
plough mean, and mark off, by very physical distinctions, the voca¬ 
tion of women, from the rough and public stir and strife of men. 
If equality means similarity of rights and duties, then the harmony 
of nature and the balance of the world would be destroyed. The 
milch cow and the ploughing ox are not meant for the same service. 
The herb that ministers healing, and the flower that yields its fra¬ 
grance to the summer air, have equal and yet most differe 7 it duties 
to render to mankind; from the tall wheat which gives its life up 
for our sustenance, or the great tree which falls to float our commerce 
on the sea. There is no hive of bees, no field of growing things, 
no human household, no housing place of cattle, no machine of man’s 
making, with its complex adaptation of each piece to its work, that 
does not cry out against the mad mistake of confusing and confound¬ 
ing, into likeness, the distinct and different functions, among which 
there is no unequalness that means inferiority. And never in any 
age of the world, nowhere in any land, and nowhere in America, so 
much as now in our own Empire State, was there such absolute 
unreason, for the clamour which seeks to distract women from the 
duties of “the vocation to which they are called,” into the mad pur¬ 
suit of the greatest wrong that can be done to their sex, their 
country and mankind. Forgive me if, all unwilling, I disturb the 
sacredness of this place and the sweetness of this scene, with such 
unwelcome thoughts. But the man who is set in public place to-day, 
to train some of the women of America for their vocation, may not, 
in times like these, withold his voice of warning against the dangers 
and delusions of the hour. 

It is what St. Paul calls a high calling ; a calling upward, an 
my dear children, to which you are called by every 
inherent indication of your nature—physical, intellectual, moral, 
spiritual—to the womanhood of womanly service to God and man. 


The officers of the Anti-Suffrage society of Third Judicial 
District, State of New York, are 

Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, - - - President. 

Mrs. W1LI.IAM J. WAI.1.ACK, - ist Vice-President. 
Mrs. Wm. Bayard Van Rknssedakr, Secretary. 

Mrs. Joseph Gavit, - - - Treasurer. 

Executive Committee. 

Mrs. W. Winseow Cranneee, - - Chairman. 

Mrs. Krastus Corning, 

Mrs. Wieeiam Cassidy, 

Mrs. j. Howard King, 

Mrs. Joee R. Reed, 

Mrs. Wm. O. Stieeman, 

Mrs. Frederick Townsend, 

Miss Lucy A. Peympton, 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 13 Elk 
Street, Albany. 


EXTENSION 


OF THE 

SUFFRAGE TO WOMEN. 


ADDKESS 


DELIVERED BEFORE THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE OF 
THE NEW YORK SENATE, 


APRIL 10 th, 1895 . 


BY 


MRS. FRANCIS M. SCOTT. 



We women who are opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage, 
have felt constrained to appear before this Committee because we 
believe the Legislative bodies to be under a misapprehension as to 
the attitude of the majority of our sex toward this, one of the most 
important social questions of the day. 

Every extension of the Suffrage has been a subject of grave 
debate, but the general feeling of a fundamental similarity between 
men, has led to Universal Male Suffrage. 

Now comes the question of the extension of the Suffrage to 
women, and we can no more call it a like question to those earlier 
ones, than we can call women like men. Equal they may be—dif¬ 
ferent they certainly are. I shall very briefly touch upon the 
points which appeal most strongly to the body of women whom 
this committee represents. 

The question of the right of Suffrage is disposed of by the fact 
that the State alone holds the power to extend the Suffrage, and 
she is only justified in extending it when her own best interests 
can be served thereby. 

That the best interests of the State would be served by the 
extension of the Suffrage to women, we do not believe Think for 
a moment of giving the voting power to a majority (we women are 
in the majority you know), unable to coerce a troublesome min¬ 
ority by physical power. A government unable to compel is no 
government at all—it is a mere travesty, a farce. We cannot be 
blind to the fact that xiivilization in the nature of things progresses 
by the force of the law, not by its moral suasion. 

But civilization goes forward by two roads; one I have 
mentioned, the other is Philanthropy, and I use the word 
broadly. By it I cover educational, municipal and charitable 
work of all kinds, and it has a most important bearing on this 
question. The fact that women have no political prizes to gain, 
no offices in view, no constituencies to please, has made them of 
special value in all this wide field of work. Their ends are more 
quickly achieved since their singleness of purpose cannot be ques¬ 
tioned. Let them be plunged into the arena of political strife and 
there will be no one left to carry on the work they now sustain so 
bravely. 

There is a ridiculous side to this whole question, which is 
tacitly avoided in these public hearings, as are other more serious 
views of the subject, but brief as the time is I propose to touch 
upon both. 

A very slight mention of the ridiculous side will suffice. We 
women are not supposed to be humorous, I know, but even the 
most serious of us are obliged to smile when we ask ourselves who 
will do our work when we are doing the men's! 

The obvious reply to that, is that all women will not want to 
go into political life if they have the ballot, any more than all men 
do, but all men may and can ; it is a matter of choice. Legislation 
is for the majority, and the majority of women are mothers, whose 
health and strength must be given to the State, during their best 
years, only through the medium of those lives in whose preserva¬ 
tion and upbringing lies the future of our country. It is these 
women—the great majority—whom we beg you to protect; the 


chivalry of men belongs to them. So sure are thousands of them 
that you will never place the burden of government upon their 
shoulders that it is difficult to persuade them that there is any 
danger of your mistaking the clamor of the suffragists for truth, 
or that their still small voice should be heard above the din. 

Ik is true that last spring, in less than three weeks, without 
solicitation, 7,000 names, nearly half of which were those of self- 
supporting women, were collected and sent to the Constitutional 
Convention to protest against the amendment you are now con¬ 
sidering, but I cannot give you an idea of how difficult it was for 
many women to gather sufficient courage even to put their names to 
a public paper. They confessed to a struggle before they could 
make up their minds to come forward. That may have been a 
foolish feeling—it is not for me to criticise—it is at least, one 
which most women understand. These women do not want publi¬ 
city, they do not want to be mixed up in politics, they just want to 
be women and do a woman’s work, and they are the great majority 
of our sex, and they should be respected. 

This question is often confounded with that of the higher 
education. Believe me they have nothing whatever to do with one 
another. The ballot in itself is not an educational force, as you 
men very well know, nor is it a wand with which to turn all vile- 
ness into purity. It is simply a part of the machinery of the State, 
a very cumbersome part, costing an enormous amount, but the 
only way we know of giving to a few representative men the power 
to legislate for all. The laws of the State have given women so 
much that any attempt to alter her position, would, in the cause of 
justice, have to begin by taking away, not adding to her rights. 

The gradual changes in the laws of this State during the last 
quarter of a century have taken away every cry of the Suffragists 
of that earlier time, and what women have asked, men have done, 
time and time again. 

Now in closing, I wish to be very serious. To many young 
persons, to many emotional persons, change is mistaken for pro¬ 
gress. Thus in the train of the women so long identitied with the 
demand for suffrage, who do not realize that the times have 
outgrown their cause, have followed many who, full of the 
unrestful spirit of the end of the century are hurrying along, 
eager only for something different, something more, forgetting 
the inexorable law which science has laid down ; the law we know 
as the Specialization of Function. In every line of life we see 
this law ruling development. Where there is specialization there 
comes to be greater and greater perfection ; nowhere is progress 
accompanied by a diffusion of force, but always by a concentration 
of effort in special directions. So, since the first development of 
sex, has specialization of the male and female types gone on ; 
men have grown more manly, women more womenly. Are we alone 
of all nature to forcibly destroy the work of untold ages, and 
thrusting men and women together, demand that the work that 
each is beginning to be perfect in shall be indifferently done by 
both ! And then, there are the assertions of greater virtue inade 
for our sex without foundation. Again, in being equal we differ. 
Born as we are of man and woman, inheriting the mental and 



moral characteristics of both parents, we differ from our brothers 
only in so far as our physical limitations affect our organizations. 
Theirs are the robuster virtues, called to growth and strength by 
rough contact with the world. Theirs the word which serves for 
the bond ; the responsibility which is the foundation of business 
life ; the integrity on which justice rests ; the broad mindedness, 
which gives each man his chance. And to balance all that, women 
have the spirit of self-sacrifice, the charity which forgives, the 
personal purity, all of which are essential to the existence of the 
home, and cause their sons to rise up and call them blessed. 

I approach this question of morality with natural hesitation. 
It, and our physical disabilities are the points I spoke of earlier as 
being ignored when this question is seriously discussed, and yet 
unless considered this question cannot be properly dealt with. 

Who does not realize the present disinclination for mother¬ 
hood which possesses so many of our younger generation, and who 
can see it without alarm? It can be traced to this unrestful 
desire for life outside the home. When motherhood is spoken of 
with contempt, when a home-life is considered too dull to be 
endured ; when the ambition of the intellectual life becomes so 
warped as to be dissatisfied with any outlet but that of public life— 
what is to become of the future ? 

Do what we may, say what we can, we cannot break down the 
barrier of sex which indicates the parting of the ways. 

Build up the wall of the law about us, seeking and accepting 
our counsel meanwhile; protect the homes, which we women 
alone can make for you ; open to us every door for our education 
and advancement, but do not put upon the shoulders of women 
the muskets they are too weak to carry, nor the burden of the 
government which was constituted to protect them ; do not force 
them to undertake an undue share of the world’s work. 

I leave this matter in your hands with confidence—I am a 
woman speaking for my silent sisters, appealing to you to leave us 
the liberty we might demand, begging you not to give your 
sanction to a retrogressive action, by breaking down the barrier 
experience has built between our sexes, but, as you go on becom¬ 
ing nobler, finer, men, carrying on the active part of the world’s 
work, to let us too progress, becoming every decade abler and 
more intellectual women, better and better fitted to help and 
counsel, but never your rivals, never partakers in the eager strife 
of public life. 


ADDRESS OF MRS. W. WINSLOW GRANNELL. 


Chairman of the Executive Committee of the 3RD Judicial 
District of the State of New York, before the 
Committee on Resolutions of the Republican 
National Convention, at St. Louis, 

June 16, 1896. 


Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee on Resolutions : 

I appear before you with reluctance and trepidation. I am 
here to represent a large body of women who do not crave publicity 
or notoriety, and who, until recently, were content to submit in 
silence to the demands presented by a few women for the extension 
of suffrage to the sex ; but when the issue was forced upon us 
either to speak or to become implicated in the suffrage movement 
through our silence, we felt that we must be heard ; and so I was 
asked to present our protest to your honorable committee: 

In the name of nearly one million and a half of women of the 
State of New York, I protest against any such action being taken by 
your honorable body as is asked for by Mrs. Blake. 

I protest in the name of the Constitutional Convention of New 
York State, in 1894, ^ body largely Republican, who, after mature 
deliberation, decided that “until it is shown that woman may become 
a politician without losing something of the precious charm of her 
personality, and that the State may exact her services in that 
capacity without imperiling its stability and tranquility, it is surely 
the conservative course of wisdom to retain the existing conditions 
under which we have achieved our great happiness and prosperity.” 

I protest in the name of South Carolina, as shown by her action 
in 1895 ; of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as shown at the 
November election in 1895 ; of Rhode Island’s Legislature of 1896. 





2 


All the best civilization opposes forced changes ; and I take it 
that such a radical change as adding to the 1,500,000 votes of New 
York State over 1,500,000 votes more, in direct opposition to the 
wishes of her people, is something that you are hardly prepared to 
father ; but if you were, there would then be these questions to be 
answered affirmatively : 

Will it be for the best interests of the country to grant the 
suffrage to women ? 

Are these certain definite benefits to be secured through women’s 
suffrage which cannot otherwise be secured ? 

And men of your intelligence, gentlemen, do not need to have 
me point out the fallacy involved in an affirmative answer. 

Permit me to state briefly our objection : 

We object to any woman who has only a backing of one thousand 
six hundred enrolled suffragists in New York State to say that she 
represents the million and one half of home-loving women of that 
state. 

We believe that the extension of suffrage to a people more than 
as large again as the present voting population would be to increase 
the evils that already threaten to overcome the principles for which 
our fathers fought. 

We assert that women to-day are so protected by laws made by 
men, that they have nothing more to ask for legally. The question 
of wages never has been, or never will be, governed by the question 
whether the wage-earner has a vote ; wages are always governed by 
demand and supply. The question of taxation without representa¬ 
tion, as applied to women who have no vote, is absurd. Taxes are 
not conditioned upon a right to vote. When our forefathers com- 
.plained it was because taxes were imposed upon them by a Parlia¬ 
ment sitting 3,000 miles away, in which there was no representation 
whatever of the colonies. They did not ask for individual representa¬ 
tion. 

There is no discrimination against women in taxation. Every 
tax-paying woman in the city of Albany, N. Y., who could be found, 
signed a protest against striking out the word “male'’ from the 
State Constitution. Many men are taxed who have no vote—the 
wealthy minor and the man why, living in one town, owns property 
in another. Taxation is the price the citizen pays for the protection 
of his property, his life and his liberty. 

The value of the ballot in itself is largely overestimated. It is 
but a simple piece of paper, were it not for the force lying behind it. 


3 


The truth of Horace Greeley’s terse statement to Miss Anthony 
many years ago, that “behind the ballot lies the bullet,’’ is as 
powerful to-day as it was when uttered. To imagine a government 
unbacked by the physical power to enforce its laws, is to imagine 
an anomaly, or something which must of necessity develop into 
anarchy. The advocates of female suffrage refuse to admit that 
the stability of government is dependent upon physical force, because 
they dare not admit it, since to do so would be to admit the weakness 
of their case. 

But you will recognize its truth, I am sure, gentlemen; otherwise 
why do you develop and improve your militia ; why do you erect 
armories and organize and drill bodies of police in all the centres of 
population ? To make laws that cannot be enforced is worse than 
useless ; and to grant the right of embroiling the nation in war to a 
people wholly incompetent to carry it on, would be to bring our 
gov^ernnient into contempt. 

Without doubt I shall be stigmatized as absurd by the women 
suffragists, but ridicule is not argument; and it is your duty as serious 
men, charged with great responsibility, to see to it that your vision 
be not obscured by chivalry, emotion or sentiment. 

We are in the midst of hard times. Every industry languishes. 
Our farmers fail in the markets, and our merchants and bankers go 
into bankruptcy. There is an undercurrent of anarchy that roils 
the waters of our social and political life. Everywhere men and 
wise women are asking. What will be the end ? The cry goes up 
all over the land. How shall we regain our prosperity ? To-day 
you were told that the people were going to ask the Republican party 
to lead them back to green pastures. Do you think that a solution 
of the problem that is vexing men’s minds and casting shades of 
gloom over the whole country can be found in adding to the already 
unwieldly and uncertain quality called male suffrage, the vote of 
every woman in this land ? 

For suffrage is not asked only for the women who are here 
to-day, but for every woman in our land without regard to intelli¬ 
gence or morality. 

If there be any among you who believes at all in the extension 
of suffrage to all women, I ask you, seriously, is this the time for 
its inception. Have you not to face such problems as have not often 
vexed men’s souls, and do you think it would be wise, at this time. 



4 


to throw into the boiling mass of unrest and disquiet the uncertain 
element of women suffrage ? 

Gentlemen, without taking up more of your time, in the name 
of your mothers, who served their country best b}^ being home 
makers and keepers, and by educating sons to care for their country; 
in the name of your wives, who are living up to the full the sweetness 
of the qualify of help-meet ; in the name of our daughters—I am 
sure you would wish to keep them out of the mire of political life— 
in the name of the maii};^ hundreds of thousands of women who are 
silent to-day because they are loving, home women and have 
confidence in you, and in the name of the many thousands of women 
in New York State whom I, personally, represent, I asked j^ou to 
refuse to take action on the question of woman suffrage. 

Officers of the Anti-Suffrage Association of the Third Judicial 
District of the State of New York : 

Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, 

President. 

Mrs. William J. Wallace, • 

ist Vice-President. 

Mrs. Wm. Bayard Van Rensselaer, 

Secretary. 

Mrs. Joseph Gavit, 

Treasurer. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, 

Chairniaji: 

Mrs. Erastus Corning, 

Mrs. William Cassidy, 

Mrs. j. Howard King, 

Mrs. Joel R. Reed, 

Mrs. Wm. O. Stillman, 

Mrs. Frederick Townsend, 

Miss Lucy A. Plympton, 

Executive Coni 77 iittee. 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 13 Elk 
Street, Albany, N. Y. 


The St. Louis Star, June 17th, 1896. 


Bravo ! Mrs. Crannetl. 


Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell is a new name to us, but she is evi¬ 
dently made of the right material. Her name indicates this. It has 
the true old Plymouth Rock ring. It brings to mind the pilgrim 
fathers and also the pilgrim mothers, who did more for this country 
than all the equal suffragists that ever drafted a resolution or 
mounted a platform. We would like to shake hands with Mrs. W. 
Winslow Crannell, and know if it is not true that she descended 
from that hardy old Governor, John Winslow,—the first native-born 
Governor of the Old Bay State. 

But we would especially like to shake hands with her because of 
her utterances before the Committee on Resolutions last evening. 
We admire her courage in protesting against women unsexing them¬ 
selves. We admire her for her plea for true womanhood. We 
admire her because, when her opponent, the manish woman, arose 
and “roasted” her, she still smiled a womanly smile that won every 
heart. 

It is such women as Mrs. Crannell that rule this nation of ours. 
These are the kind of women that rocked our cradles. These are 
the kind of women that put the Red Cross on their sleeves and 
walked the battlefields and hospitals. These are the kind of women 
who save men’s souls, and by saving them save the nation. 

We do not know Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell and we are sorry. 
We should like to know her so that we could say to her personally, 
how much we admire her and her sentiments. And we believe that 
ninety-nine women out of every hundred will say amen to every 
word she has uttered. 











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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 17, 1896. 


A WOMAN SPIKED THEIR GUNS. 


The Sub-Committee on Resolutions Jumped at the 
Chance to Ignore the Demands of 
THE Suffragists. 


While the sub-committee of the Resolutions Committee was busy 
Tuesday night drafting the platform, a few members of the general 
committee met in the ladies’ ordinary at the Eindell House to give 
the Suffragists, Young Women’s Christian Association and repre¬ 
sentatives of Republican clubs an opportunity to speak. 

President Blake had just completed an eloquent talk to temporary 
Ciiairman Eew Wallace and his associates on the Committee, asking 
for the right to vote, and insisting upon the Republican party going 
on record as favoring the submission of the question to the voters of 
the several States. 

All the other suffragists were preparing to leave when Chairman 
Wallace announced that Mrs. Crannell was present on behalf of a 
large number of women to oppose suffrage. 

There was a stir among the women and a ripple of applause 
from the Committee as Mrs. Crannell came forward. 

She said that she protested against suffrage in behalf of one 
million and a half women in New York. She was also authorized to 
speak for Massachusetts, Rhode Island and North Carolina. She 
asserted that President Blake was backed by only 1,600 enrolled 
suffragists in New York State, and that the movement was opposed 
by the home-makers and home-keepers. 

Mrs. Crannell created consternation among the distinguished 
suffragists who had come from all over the country to present their 
appeal to the Republican Convention. They were astounded at 
Mrs. Crannell’s audacity, dismayed by the spirit in which it was 
received by the committee and annoyed at the applause which came 
from different parts of the room. 

But the bombshell of the New York anti-suffragist had its effect. 
The would-be voters were ruffled in temper, while the committee 
secretly rejoiced that the game had taken this turn. 

Many of the members openly congratulated Mrs. Crannell. 
She wore her honors meekly. 

Perhaps no woman ever created a bigger sensation before a 
Committee on Resolutions. 






The Woman Suffrage Question. 

Opinion of an Eminent Leader Kegarding the So-Called 
W oMAN^s Eights Plank in the Republican Platform. 

[From St. Louis Star, June 19, 1896.] 


Henry B. Blackwell, of Massachusetts, the veteran advocate 
of female suffrage, Avhom the women designated as the husband 
of the late Lucy Stone,^’ is evidently as much disappointed over the 
setback given to his adopted cause as any one of the candidates who 
got left in the race for national honors. 

Mr, Blackwell said wdien asked if he was satisfied with the 
rights of women plank in the Republican national platform: 

The cause of woman^s suffrage was never so decidedly ig¬ 
nored and so completely sat down upon as it was by the committee 
on resolutions, and in the recently adopted platfonn of the Repub¬ 
lican party. 

Following the division of the suffragists came the represent¬ 
ative of the anti-suffrage movement of the East, Mrs. W. Winslow 
Crannell, who defeated them in their efforts before the resolutions 
committee at a single blow. Members of the committee looked 
upon this woman from Xew York as one sent especially to help 
them in their embarrassing situation. The combined ability of a 
number of prominent suffragists became as nothing when one 
woman, who represented a large following, asked of the committee 
not to grant their request. It was a protest more forceful than the 
protest of a thousand men. It was unfortunate that these singular 
conditions presented themselves at this time. It will require years 
to regain the lost ground.” 
















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Address of Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, 

Chairman of the Executive Committep: op the Anti- 
Suffrage Association of the 30 Judiciae District 
OF THE State of New York, beforp: the Com- 
mittp:p: on Resoeutions of the Democratic 
Nationae Convention, at Chicago, Juey 8tli, 
1896. 


Jl/r. Chairma?i and Gcntlenieyi of the Committee on Resoliitio 7 is : 

I scarcely expected when I heard the cause of Woman Suffrage 
presented at St. Eouis to the Republican Convention, that I should 
be forced to protest against it before 3-our honorable bod}"; for it was 
distinctl}" stated at that tirne that the suffragists either were, or were 
willing to be. Republicans ; and that women suffragists everywhere, 
had worked to save the country from what they then termed 
‘‘Democratic and Populistic misrule.” This fact is substantiated by 
the plank that they succeeded in getting into the Republican plat¬ 
form ; which w"as written by a prominent suffragist, was approved 
b}" all of the suffragists present, and which runs : 

‘ ‘The Republican party is mindful of the rights and interests of 
women. Protection of American industries includes equal oppor¬ 
tunities, equal pay for equal work, and protection to the home.' We 
favor tlie admission of women to wider spheres of usefulness, and 
welcome their co-operation in rescuing the country from Democratic 
and Populistic mismanagement and misrule.” ' 

And now they ask you, who they claim have mismanaged and 
misruled the country, to give them the franchise that they may still 
further work against you. If they w^ere honest in their wording of 
the Republican plank, then they would have no right to appear 
before 3’ou; if they were not honest, then they certainly have no 
right to appear, because one of the reasons for which they ask the 
franchise, is that they intend through it to purify politics ; and if 
this be the manner of purification, it must be based upon the homeo¬ 
pathic principle of Similia Shiiilibus Ciu'antiir. 

You know enough about politics, gentlemen, to take at its true 
value the assertion that women, by voting, could change the existing 
condition of things. But if they could, would you want your wives 
or your daughters, your mothers or your sisters, to take active part 




ill the primaries and caucuses, at the polls, and even in the con¬ 
ventions, for the purpose of making them what it is claimed they 
would be “social centers?” And after politics were purified l)y 
women, who would purify the women? Is it not true that woman¬ 
hood would suffer more than political morality would gain ? And 
while the purification is going on who is going to do the homework, 
and the charitable work, that now vSo fills the lives of good women 
that they are often overburdened, and break down beneath the 
strain? It is to build up homes, not to break down their walls, and 
quench the light upon the hearth stone, that women’s best energies 
should be directed. 

Mrs. Stanton-Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 
said in a published article, that it was better to let home suffer in 
order that women should gain economic freedom. ‘ ‘Let the women” 
she said, “who have not the taste for domestic work turn their 
children over to other women’s care.” We have too inaii}^ servant 
mothers to-day ; and the true duty of woman to woman, as well as to 
man, is to encourage and upbuild the home life from which we are 
so sadly drifting ; and it is only as women yield themselves to the 
elevating and purifying influence of Christian teaching concerning 
marriage and home, that they rise to a higher moral level, and bring 
men up to that plane with them. 

I appear before you unwillingly ; but as the representative of 
the many millions of women who have hitherto proved the “silent 
majority.” I come from New York State where there are only 1600 
enrolled suffragists out of nearly 7,000,000 people, or, 29 organized 
suffragists to every 100,000 of her population. I have also been 
asked to represent the home-loving women of Massachusetts where 
there are but 51 organized suffragists to every 100,000 of her people; 
of Pennsylvania where there are only 14 organized suffragists to 
every 100,000 of her population ; of New Hampshire where there 
are but 5 suffragists to every 100,000 of her inhabitants; of Connecti¬ 
cut where there are only 23 suffragists to every 100,000 of her 
inhabitants; of South Carolina where there are but three suffragists for 
every 100,000 of her people ; of Arkansas where there are only three 
suffragists to every 100,000 of her people ; besides being asked to 
speak by women of prominence in California, where there are but 33 
suffragists to every 100,000 of her people; in Illinois where there are 
but 13 suffragists to every 100,000 of her people ; in Michigan 
where there are only six suffragists to ever}" 100,000 of her people ; 
in Kentucky where there are but 32 suffragists to every 100,000 cf 
her people; in Iowa where there are only six suffragists to every 
100,000 of her people ; in Virginia where there is but one suffragist to 
every 100,000 of her people ; in Maryland where there are only six 


2 


suffragists to every 100,000 of her people ; in Maine where there are 
but 12 suffragists to every 100,000 of her people ; in Ohio where 
there are only ii suffragists to every 100,000 of her people, and in 
New Jersey where there are but eight suffragists to every 100,000 of 
her people. All these requests coining to me unsolicited. 

These statistics are taken from an address delivered by Mr. Catt, 
husband of the National Suffrage organizer, before the National 
Society, at their annual meeting last January; and published in the 
Woman’s Journal, the suffrage organ edited by Henry B. Blackwell,— 
better known as the husband of Lucy Stone,—and his daughter, 
Alice Stone Blackwell. I make this statement so that it may not 
be subject to contradiction by anyone present. 

What are the reasons given for asking you to help the cause of 
Woman Suffrage? 

First; That women who pay taxes should have a ballot. In 
answer we assert that the women who pay taxes do not want the 
ballot. That taxes are not conditioned upon the right to vote. 
That there is no discrimination against women in taxation. That 
taxation is the price the citizens pa}^ for the protection of their 
property, their life, their liberty. That many men are taxed who 
have no vote,—the wealthy minor, and the man who living in one 
town owns property in another. , That the woman who pays taxes 
will receive no benefit from the ballot which will not be an hundred 
times counteracted by the ballot of the women who do not pay 
taxes. That what is needed for the benefit of the tax-paying 
woman is not an increased but a restricted ballot. That while there 
are in New York State 144,000 women who pay taxes, there are 
at least 1,500,000 women who do not pay taxes ; and the granting 
of suffrage to these women would more than duplicate the evils from 
which the tax-payer now suffers. 

Second : That when women have the ballot, they will be 
employed constantly and at higher wages. The answer is shown in 
the fact that men vote and are 3^et unemployed. That no employer 
is going to pay an increased wage because the employee has the 
franchise. That while there are, as in the factories every where, long 
lists of girls waiting to be employed at nominal figures, no employer 
is going to raise the pay of his employees because they ask an hour 
off to vote on election day. 

Third : That the cause of temperance will be helped when 
women vote. I admire the women who are working for temperance, 
and wish them God speed, but feel perfectly sure that they are mis¬ 
taken if they expect to be helped by the granting of suffrage to all 
women North, South, East and West. Statistics tell us that while 
the population of the United States has increased but 20 per cent in 

3 



the last two decades, the dram drinking and drug taking women have 
increased 500 per cent. The Christian Advocate is 1113" authority for 
the statement that before the high license law in Philadelphia, Penn., 
out of 8,034 saloon licenses 3,696 were granted to women. In Boston, 
Mass, last Spring, out of 1,100 liquor licenses 491 were applied for 
by women. The same condition of things prevails nearly all over 
our country. Would these women work for prohibition ? 

Let us look carefully at what is asked for : ‘ ‘Equal pay for 

equal work.” That sounds equitable and consequently reasonable. 
But if the question of wages were to become a matter of legislation, 
would you be willing to say to the already overburdened and unem¬ 
ployed workman that you believe that his wages should be cut down 
to those received by women ? Eor it is a fact beyond di.si3ute that 
the wages paid is always a question of demand and supply ; and 
women have entered nearly every field of labor once a man’s sole 
province ; and, b3^ being willing and able to work for lower wages 
than men, who have families to support, have crowded them out. 
Now if equal wages for equal work means anything at all, it means 
that no man shall be paid more for his work than the women are 
begging to receive. For instance, if that law could be passed and 
enforced, the merchant could say to his male emplo3^e that he could 
fill his shop with girls at half the price he was paying him, and while 
he preferred keeping the man at the higher rate, he must either dis¬ 
charge him or lower his wages to that which, women were asking to 
receive. But the whole thing is a farce. You do not ask, in fact, I 
doubt if any of you care, how much the workman is paid who makes 
your clothes. I know that women do not ; otherwise they would 
not haggle over prices, and gloat over bargains. This is hard 
common-sense. It isn’t poetic nor imaginative. It is more, it is 
truth, and 3^ou are here to deal with truths and not with fallacies. 

The number of votes cast at the general election in 1892 was 
12,034,858. To grant suffrage to women would be to more than 
double that number. Do you believe that at this time,, if at any 
time, when industries languish, and our farmers are being pushed to 
the wall, while our bankers and merchants go into bankruptc3", that 
it would be wise to add this immense increase to the voting population? 

The facts for the suffragists to prove are that suffrage is necessary 
for the protection of women, and that it would be beneficial to the 
State. They have not and cannot prove either. To-da3" in New 
York State, and in many of the other States, a woman is protected 
better by the laws that men have made, than by any she could make 
her.self. A husband cannot sell his real estate unless the wife joins 
in the deed. He cannot deprive her by will of right of dower. 
The wife can by deed or will dispose of her entire estate, real or 

4 


personal, whether the husband consents or not. A father cannot 
now apprentice his child or make a valid appointment of a testa¬ 
mentary guardian without the consent of the mother, if she be living. 
The wife can carry on business on her owm account, and is entitled to 
all the profits and earnings in that business, and may contract as if 
she were unmarried. Every profession is open to women, and every 
occupation also. Then what do they want, wdiat will they gain by 
having the ballot ? If men are not capable of managing the affairs 
of the State and the Nation according to the highest and best ideas 
of the race, that is of both men and -women, will you permit me 
to respectfully inquire what proper and adequate share of this 
world’s w'ork you can perform? What is your natural place in the 
order of society ? Are you mere hewers of wood and drawers of 
water? You cannot bear citizens; you cannot care for them in 
infancy and rear them to manhood. If you cannot govern them with 
wisdom an4 justice when they are given into your hands, what is 
your reason for being? It strikes me that these women who want 
to retain all the privileges of their sex, and secure besides those, all that 
they think a man has; who want to be men and yet remain women; 
have much hardihood in coming to you and saying : “ You do not 
know how to make laws; how to govern the people; you are corrupt 
and misrule the nation. Give us the suffrage that we may supplant 
you” And they say this not for themselves alone, but for all the 
women in this great nation. North, South, East and West, without 
regard to education or morality! They are to purify politics! 

Gentlemen, a large number of the leaders of the suffrage party 
became a revising committee to give to the world what is known as 
the Woman’s Bible. At the-present time they have only dealt with 
the Pentateuch. I need only to quote from its columns to show you 
its character. It is said: “The utter contempt for all the decencies 
of life, and all the natural personal rights of women, as set forth in 
these pages”—the Bible—“should destroy in the minds qf women, at 
least, all authority to superhuman origin, and stamp the Pentateuch 
at least as emanating from the most obscene minds of a barbarou - 
age.” The story of the creation is said to “have been manipulated 
by some Jew in order to give heavenly authority for requiring the 
woman to obey the man she married.” When it was tound that the 
Christian women all over the land raised their voices in protest, at 
the National meeting of the suffragists, it was voted to repudiate the 
Woman’s Bible as a suffrage work, but only by a majority of twelve 
They then cast the onus of revision upon Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 
who is more to be honored for her truthfulness, than are the many 
women whose names are found among the revising committee, and 
who betray their leader. Nearly as many of the articles are written 
by Eillie Devereux Blake as by Mrs. Stanton; and the character of 

5 




them will be seen when I tell you that she covers much space to 
prove that “the chief point of interest in the parable of Balaam and 
his ass, is that the ass belonged to the female sex.” 

These are the women who are going to give us better laws than 
those founded on the Mosaic code, and who are going to purify 
politics ! Do you wonder, gentlemen, that the mothers appe£ll to 
you ; the mothers who have budded their homes upon the truths laid 
down in the Bible ; and who have taught you to reverence it? There 
is little enough of reverence left in the world to-day. Take away 
from men and women that belief in the Bible that causes them to 
strive to do right for righteousness sake, and what have you ? 
History tells you 

The suffragists speak of what has been accomplished by woman 
suffrage in a hazy sort of way. Tet us have facts : 

Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming, where women have voted 
for a quarter of a century, has a population of less than 12,000. I 
am told that in Cheyenne there are 25 licensed gambling houses, and 
that saloons are as numerous as any other kind of stores; and it has 
been stated that not a single act of legislation aimed at the better¬ 
ment of the human race, has been passed in Wyoming through 
woman’s influence. Gen. Thompson, who managed the Democratic 
campaign in Wyoming, in 1892, .said :—“The women’s vote is the 
easiest thing in the world to get, and the easiest thing to keep, and 
the easiest thing to manipulate of any element in politics.” After 
six month’s residence in Wyoming, divorce may be obtained for any 
one of eleven reasons ! 

-The history of woman’s influence in the legislative halls of 
the other States where woman suffrage obtains, is not a glowing 
tribute to their intelligence or probity, and has been in existence too 
short a time to be given as precedent for the States East and South. 
The partial suffrage referred to is also a thing not to be boasted of 
by the women who desire the suffrage. The record of the Mass¬ 
achusetts vote is that in Boston in 1888, 20,252 women registered in 
the interest of school suffrage, and most of them voted, for it was a 
warfare of religious sects; a Protestant and a Roman Catholic light, 
such as would appeal to most women. The next year the number 
of women registering was reduced nearly one-half. In 1891, 6,008 
women registered and 5,428 voted. The same thing was tried in 
Connecticut and not two and one-half per cent of the women entitled 
to vote exercised that right. Do you imagine for a moment that they 
would do better if a full franchise were given them ? Who are the 
women who would go to the polls in stormy weather? I do not need 
to prove to you gentlemen that the women who would vote ‘ ‘ early 
and often ’ ’ are not the women to whom you would trust the ballot in 
case of need. 


6 


. It has been stated to you that I have no right to claim that I 
represent 1,500,000 women of New York. It has also been stated 
that 400,000 women of New York had signed the suffrage petition. 
The truth of the matter is, gentlemen, that two years ago when the 
suffragists made an effort to strike out tlie word “male” from the 
Constitution of New York, Miss Susan B. Anthony promised to offer 
a petition signed by 1,000,000 women of New York ; and with that 
end in view, the suffragists canvassed New York State with that 
energ}" for which they are noted. I should not be surprised to learn 
that not one woman over 21 years of age had escaped having been 
tried to be cajoled or coerced into signing the petition. The result 
was a failure so great that they abandoned the idea of getting the 
women to sign, and so they asked men to come to their help. They 
paid for signatures sometimes as high as three cents. In one town 
there were sent in the signatures of more women than there were 
women in the town, over 21 years of age. They did not succeed even 
then; so the}^ claimed to have the signatures of 200,000 members of 
the labor organization, and 50,000 grangers through their respective 
secretaries. Many members of both of these organizations have 
denied since then having known of the petition, and also denied 
having any sympathy with the woman suffrage movement. 

They claimed also 75,000 W. C. T. U. members. I have personal 
friends who are members of the W. C. T. U. and who are bitterly 
opposed to the granting of suffrage to all classes and conditions of 
women. 

But allowing for the sake of the argument that all these persons 
signed the petition, they then only claimed 426,000 names; as 
reported at the time. I quote from an article written b}^ one of the 
leaders after their defeat before the Constitutional Convention. “We 
have 200,000 women’s names encircled by the great arms of labor 
and clasped together by the strong arms of the farm’ ’, which is poetic 
at least, but which only claims 200,000 women. 

There are 7,000,000 of people in New York State. It is fair to 
believe that one-quarter of that number are women over 21 years of 
age, that is 1,750,000. The truth is, that there are several thousand 
more women than men in New York State. But granting them those 
figures, I lay claim to only those women who refused to be enrolled 
as suffragists, when I say I represent 1,500,000 women of voting age 
in New York State, who do not desire to have suffrage thrust upon 
them. I am sorry to take up your time to prove my assertion : One 
more fact and I will close. 

The Anti-suffragists have not tried to organize until recently ; 
and then only because we were forced to protest against the jcry of 
this very small minority that claimed “women do not oppose suffrage 


7 




even if they do not ask for it”. In the city of Albany, N. Y., in one 
month’s time 8,320 women signed the anti-suffrage protest. This 
will give you an idea of the feeling of the women. In this number 
were nearly every tax-paying woman in Albany as well as women 
who work for their daily bread. On my return home from St. Louis, I 
was delighted beyond expression when I went into one of our large.st 
dr3*-good shops to have one of the women clerks thank me for the 
position I had taken at St. Louis, and before I left the shop every 
girl in the department had expressed her thanks. One of them 
said : “We signed the suffrage petition; we did not understand what 
it meant; but when we did we signed the anti-suffrage protest. When 
I marry I expect to get a husband who can be trusted to make the 
laws that are to protect me and my children, and until that time, my 
father will look out for me better than I could for niy.self. ’ ’ 

It is said by the suffragists that I represent women who are 
slaves ; and that we boast of our bondage. Well, gentlemen, if it is 
to be a slave to be a woman in this part of the 19th century, in the 
United States of America, where women are so protected b}^ laws 
made for them by men, that they may enjoy every privilege a man 
enjo>^s without anno^’ance or effort; where men toil from morning 
till night to provide the women of their households with the 
luxuries of life as well as its necessities ; where ninety-nine men 
stand ready to chastise the one man who ma}^ dare to insult a woman ; 
where nothing that the womenly women ask for legall}" is denied 
them by men ; then I am proud to belong to that class of women 
whom the suffragists dub “slaves”; and it is in the name of these 
women who are living the lives God intended them to live, whose 
even wholesome existence in the charm of youth, in the bloom of 
maturity, and in the calm decline of age, proves the wisdom and 
bsneficence of the Creator,—your mothers, your wives, your 
daughters,--! ask you not to embod}’ in 3’our platform an}" resolution, 
that even by the greatest stretch of imagination, could convey a 
belief that you approved of and favored woman suffrage. 

Officers of the Anti-Suffrage Association of the Third Judicial 
District of the State of New York : 

Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, Mrs. Erastus Corning, 


President. 

Mrs. William J. Wallace, 

ist Vice-Preside 7 it. 
Mrs. Wm. B. Van Rensselaer, 
Secretaiy. 

Mrs. Joseph Gavit, 

. Treasurer. 


Mrs.J. Howard King, 
Mrs. Wm. O. Stillman, 
Mrs. William Cassidy, 
Mrs. Joel R. Reed, 


Mrs. Frederick Townsend, 
Miss Lucy A. Plympton, 

Executive Coinniittee. 


Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, Chairman. 

Other leaflets may be obtained by applying to the Anti-Suffrage 
Association, 13 Elk Street, Albany, N. Y. 



CHICAGO CHRONICLE, JULY 10, 1896. 


OPPOSE WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


MRS. CRANNELL ENDORSED. 


Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, who spoke against the granting of 
suffrage to women before the committee on resolutions, was criticised 
by her opponents for saying she spoke for twelve different States. 
Since then she has received the following letters : 

Cleveland, O.—I heard recently that your Anti-suffrage asso¬ 
ciation is to be represented at the democratic convention in Chicago, 
and I should like to say that lu}^ name may be mentioned as one in 
sympathy with your movement. As far as I know the women of 
my State, many of them at least, would also be glad to be known on 
your side. 

MARY H. POMEROY. 

From Oakland, Cal., comes the following : 

I know there are a great many women, and it seems to me the 
best class, opposed to political equality, but the Misses Anthony and 
Shaw have been here a long time and are making a terrible fight for 
it here. * * * There is an anti-suffrage league in San 

Francisco. * * * j wish you would include the protest 

of many California women in your request to the democratic conven¬ 
tion. * * * Yours with success and gratitude for the 

preservation of our woman’s birthright. 


EMMA C. PERCY. 






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The following was received from Colorado ; 

Thank God that there is one woman in this land brave enough 
to enter her voice in protest against this great wrong sought to be 
enforced upon woman. I live in Colorado, where I know what 
woman suffrage means. To-day, if the question arose, it would be 
defeated by an overwhelming majority, but they tell us we can do 
nothing to relieve ourselves of this added burden and responsibility. 
Cannot you suggest a means of escape from this slavery, and show us 
how to regain our liberty, our freedom ? We would be only too glad 
to follow vSO brave a leader as you, but to be known would mean the 
political ostracism of every member of one’s household, and so, 
while we hope you will enter a protest in the name of many thou¬ 
sand of women of Colorado, for the sake of their sisters in other 
States, I am too much a coward to have my name used. You, 
with your brave heart, will scorn me from this, but I am sure you will 
realize what it would mean to me, a woman who finds all her plea¬ 
sures in her home and family, and who has never even dared to pray 
in public, to place myself in a position where my name would be 
tossed from paper to paper, as well as from mouth to mouth, in de¬ 
rision, and to be attacked, as I would be, by the women suffragists. 
May the God who made us women keep you well and strong to bat¬ 
tle for us. 

Many telegrams were received by Mrs. Crannell, among them 
the following : 

“The loyal women of Connecticut thank and congratulate our 
Portia.” 

“Always true as steel. That is your record of old, and Dela¬ 
ware women thank you.” 

“You should have for your motto : ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici.’ Accept 
the New Jersey women’s thanks.” 

A message from Albany, N. Y., tenders thanks for the work 
done. 




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Oyster Bay, L. I., January 31, 1899. 

Yoiir letter of January 28tli, making inquiries as to the number of women entitled to vote and the 
number who voted at the last School Meeting is at hand. 

I am unable to answer the first. In regard to the second would say that no woman has voted at a 
regular school meeting. At one or two special meetings, a limited number have availed themselves of the 






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As to Suffrage in New York State 


To the; Editor of the Sun: — Sir: Is it expedient to grant 
suffrage to women in New York State? Will it be for the best 
interests of the State? Will it be for woman’s best interest? 

These are the questions that the people of New York State have 
had forced upon them since the Constitutional Convention assembled 
in 1894, when the women desirous of suffrage for their sex asked that 
the word “male” be stricken from the Constitution, and the women 
who were opposed to the extension of suffrage woke up from their 
seeming lethargy and demanded that they should not be forced into 
the political arena. 

Thereasonsadvancedby the “opponents” and “anti-suffragists,” 
together with the common sense of the great majority of the men who 
formed the Committee on Revision, led to the defeat of the suffragists. 
They worked like beavers. They promised to bring the names of 
1,000,000 women, over 21 years of age, signed to petitions asking 
for suffrage ; but they failed to get one-half the number, even though 
they gave their own figures as to results; even though they paid for 
the collection of names; even though they claimed the vote of large 
corporations through the signature of one man; even though they 
cajoled men and boys into signing, and even though they forgot the 
age limit and let every one sign who could wield a pen. 

It was hoped that the action of the Constitutional Convention 
would settle the matter for twenty-five years, and that the women who 
had been forced into work that was distasteful might now return in 
quiet to their roumi of home duties and divest themselves of the 
publicity and notoriety thrust upon them. 

But the suffragists continued the fight. East winter, coached by 
an astute politician, whose name has been recorded on the “ anti’s” 
books for overwhelming defeat if they are ever forced to vote, they, 
the suffragists, worked cautiously and quietly, and, by buttonholing, 
flower-giving, and lobbying, succeeded in carrying through both 



1 

Houses a concurrent resolution which is to give the people of the 
State a right to vote upon the question of suffrage for women. 

That the men of both Houses realize the objectionable methods 
of work is made apparent by their passing a regulation which they 
are enforcing this winter, that no woman shall be permitted on the 
floor of either House without a card of admission. 

There was an error in the wording of the resolution, and the 
result is that it will still have to pass tvi o consecutive legislatures, 
and the work of last winter is null and void. 

Why did it pass both Houses last winter ? In answer I give the 
replies of many of the men in both Houses—that, though objecting 
to woman suffrage, they felt that to relieve themselves from the con¬ 
stant annoyance of the women lobbyists it would be well to let it go 
to the people and be settled at once for all time. But they did not 
realize what would be the action of the suffragists even though the 
people gave an overwhelming defeat to their project, as they did last 
fall in Massachusetts. What was the result there ? They are forcing 
their claim upon the Legislature again this winter; and when they 
were denied a hearing by a committee appointed on woman suffrage, 
they immediately declared their intention of forcing a hearing by 
three other committees. And that would be the result in New York 
State if the concurrent resolution were passed and an overwhelming 
defeat met with at the polls. And so we come back to our original 
questions, which should be the only ones to influence our legislators. 

It is said above that the suffragists of New York State claim to 
have about half a million names to their petition. At the annual 
suffrage convention in Washington, held last month, a paper was 
read on the relative amount of suffrage organization in the different 
States and the statement was made that there were only i,6oo 
enrolled suffragists in New York State. In the city of Albany, 
alone, in one month, there were enrolled upon the anti-suffrage lists 
more than five times that number. 

No reason has ever been advanced showing positively that 
woman or the State would be benefitted by the* vote of women. 
Wyoming and Utah are held up as patterns for New York ? The 
history of woman suffrage in Wyoming does not give one a great 
longing to see it in force in New York. And if Wyoming, with a 
territory twice as large as the State of New York, with a population 
scattered over it of about 60,000, less than that of one of the smallest 


3 

of New York’s second-class cities, is what it is to-day through twenty- 
five years of woman suffrage, New York, with more than 6,000,000 
inhabitants, has done well not to follow in the wake of this baby State. 
As for Utah—well, we all know what Utah was under woman suffrage, 
or from 1869 to 1886, when the women were disfranchised. What it 
will be now is only a question of time, but as it has a white popu¬ 
lation of only about 200,000, it can scarcely, under any circumstances, 
be set up as a pattern for Ne"W York State. ^ 

The legislators of New York should not inflict upon the women 
of the State the unpleasant duty of entering the field in opposition to 
suffrage, which a vote to allow it to pass to the people for final action 
would entail. Neither should any legislator who believes that it 
would not be for the best interests of woman or the State to grant 
suffrage to women lend his influence by voting to pass it to the people. 
And it would not release us from suffrage clamor. 

The Woman's Journal “More than one hundred 

petitions for woman suffrage have already been forwarded to members 
of the Massachusetts Legislature. Others are coming in daily.’’ 

As there are only 1,600 enrolled suffragists in New York State, 
and as these are only in part women, should not the desire of the 
silent majority—a majority of many millions of women—influence 
our legislators to give an overwhelming defeat to the concurrent 
resolution when it is again brought up? Until it can be shown by 
sworn statements that a majority of the women of the State demand 
suffrage, no Legislature has the right to submit the question to the 
male vote. And any one familiar with the abuse of the male 
suffrage wdll not deem it wise or prudent to more than double the 
atrocities that are now being perpetrated under the guise of political 
emergencies. Let the suffragists enforce the laws already made. 
That will keep them busy and be helpful to the State. 

AiyBANY, February 22, A. P. P. 



A SUFFRAGE LESSON. 


The Pittsburg “Chronicle” of January 19, 1897, contains the 
following: 

Now that the women of Colorado have the ballot, they are 
wondering whether it is worth much. A Colorado woman is quoted 
as saying: 

“The great advantage of suffrage is that it teaches women that 
they are not one bit better than men. We’ve sat for years and told 
men how corrupt their politics were, and men have smiled up at us 
and told us how superior we are and how we should have suffrage. 
We’ve had a large and enthusiastic surprise party. We women have 
found that our politics are just as corrupt as men’s politics and 
they’re just a little trickier. We’ve been at it two years, and we’re 
scheming and making combinations and doing all the very things 
we’ve been finding fault with the men for doing all these years. 

“The women of the better classes are getting disgusted and 
drawing out of politics, just as our men have done, and the women 
of the other classes have become enthusiastic and have gone into 
politics just as their mankind have done.” 

Well, Well, Well! This is most suprising reading. So, 
woman suffrage does not bring all the reforms, the joy and the 
purity that were to be expected from the roseate views which were 
expounded by advocates of giving women the right to vote. 

Instead of exalting politics it seems according to this authority, 
that woman suffrage has developed even a trickier phase of politics 
than was knowm when the game was played exclusively by men. 

This is very sad. If it be true, it is manifest that the persons 
who acted as though they were inspired when they arose to advocate 
granting w^omen the divine right to vote were not inspired at all, 
but were singularly at fault in all their vaticinations. 

Man is inclined to place woman on a pedestal and there adore 
her, but if women will persist in going about predicting that granting 
them the privilege to vote will effect the world’s regeneration and 
then come out when the privilege is accorded with the confession 
that politics under woman’s influence has gone from bad to worse, it 
is feared that man will lose that absorbing affection he has always 
felt for the other sex and will regard it as composed of very weak 
and very foolish sisters .—Albany Eveiimg Jour 7 ial^ January 2y, i^ 97 > 




ANTI-SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION. 


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FROM THE SEATTLE DAILY TIMES, 


February 14th, 1898. 


AS TO WOMEN. 


The Idaho Register of Idaho Falls, commenting upon an 
address given at that place during the suffrage campaign by 
Mrs. Catt, gave the following personal testimony regarding 
Wyoming : 

“It seems that she has allowed some enthusiast in Wyoming 
to fill her mind with wonderful stories about the results of equal 
suffrage in that State, and she, taking them as true statements, 
tells them as such. From some of them one is led to believe 
that Wyoming is a paradise. 

‘ ‘She demonstrated that the compulsory education law was 
responsible for the small percent of criminals in the penitentiary, 
and of idiocy in the state, and then claimed that this was the 
fruit of female suffrage. 

“One who was not better informed would imagine that the 
juries and political conventions were mostly composed of 
women. ’ ’ 

“The writer was a resident of Wyoming from 1870 to 
1880, and during that time attended every territorial con¬ 
vention, both Republican and Democratic, and every county 
convention in the two western counties that were held during 
that time, and no woman ever sat as delegate in any one of 
them ; and it was usually only by urging and stating that 
others had voted, and their vote was wanted to offset it, that 
a large portion of the women could be induced to vote.” 







A Moment with RUSKIN. 


“ In a recent conversation with Ruskin, touching “ our Repub¬ 
lican experiment,” as he was pleased to call the United States, he 
said, “ The fact of women being elected to mayoralties in Kansas 
makes me think of certain African tribes that exalt their women into 
warriors—you want your women to fight your political battles ? ’ ’ 

” You evidently hold the same opinion on the subject of equal 
rights that you expressed some years ago,” interposed a listener. 

” What did I say ?—really I have forgotten.” 

” You replied to a correspondent, saying: ” You are certainly 
right as to my views respecting the female franchise, so far from 
wishing to give votes to women I would fain take them away from 
most men.” 

‘ ‘ Truly that was a sensible answer. My respect for woman is 
too great to force upon her increased responsibilities. Then, as for 
restricting the franchise with men, I am of the firm conviction that 
no man should be allowed to vote that does not own property, or 
who cannot do considerable more than read and write. The voter 
makes the laws, and why should the laws regulating the holding of 
property be made by a man who has no interest in property beyond 
a covetous desire, or why should he legislate the education when he 
possesses none ? Then again, women do not bear arms to protect 
the state.” 

” But what do you say to Mrs. Carlock, who answers, that 
inasmuch as men do not bear children they have no right to vote, 
going to war, possibly being necessary and possibly not, but the 
perpetuity of the state demanding that someone bear children ? ’ ’ 

‘‘ The lady’s argument is ingenious but lacks force, when we 
consider that the bearing of arms is a matter relating to statecraft, 
while the baby question is Dame Nature’s own and is not to be 
regulated even by the sovereign.” 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 13 Elk 
Street, Albany, N. Y. 



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Translated. 

Extracts from 

“Revue des deux Mondes,” August, 1896.” 
“L’Australie et La Nouvelle-Zelande.” “Les 
Experiences Sociales—Le Feminisme”—par 
M. Pierre Le Roy Beaulieu. 


The new societies which have constituted themselves in the 
English Colonies of the antipodes, represent in the highest degree all 
the tendencies, good or bad, of modern civilization. If one applies to 
Australia the different criterions by which one judges the degree of 
culture of a country, one is forced to admit that this new world has 
already distanced all its elders. It is not of literary or artistic 
development that we mean to speak, for we know that one cannot 
expect to find eiiher in such a young world. And besides, our 
attention is more especially given to what will interest the masses 
who have alwaj’S disdained the most refined sides and the most 
elevated of civilization. But as far as the wide-spreading of 
knowledge and of the material conditions of existence, of the activ¬ 
ity of transaction between men, Australia is certainly nearer the 
ideal than any of its contemporaries. Illiterate people are rare. 
Letters and telegrams are more numerous, and commerce larger, 
considering the population, than an3"where else. The standard of 
life is higher. Life is larger in all classes, if you judge by the 
statistics of consumption of certain edibles, such as meat, sugar and 
others. Finally, in spite of the tie which binds them to the British 
Government, nowhere is Democracy more triumphant than in the 
Australian Colonies. Nowhere else have social innovations been 
carried farther, even to emancipating woman from her traditional 
minority. Nowhere else has the extension of self-government 
found such powerful champions. 

From thence comes the interest which attaches itself to the 
study of these young societies, which contain all the modern 
aspirations, durable or not, which have a chance of developing much 
more than in Europe, where they are hampered by the traditions of 



tile past. They are for us quite a laboratory of social science, and 
the observation of the exp*eriences which their inhabitants undergo 
can be singularly useful to the old world. We must bear in mind, 
however, the difference of surroundings, the great difference between 
that virgin land of Australia, where civilization has only just begun, 
and old Europe, where it has grown slowl5^ and has taken root in 
the distant past. Trials more or less happy in one might be fatal to 
the other. 

The independence of Australian Colonies in social matters, their 
disdain for the traditions, or, as they would say, the prejudices, of 
the old world has led them into many flights of innovation. So they 
have welcomed woman suffrage with as much ardor as they did 
socialism. New Zealand in 1893, South Australia in 1895, have 
given to women the right to vote, and it will, without donbt, be a 
very short time before other colonies do the same. These two 
colonies with the exception of the American states of Colorado, 
Wyoming and Utah, are the only countries where women have a 
right to vote at all the elections. This political emancipation is more 
surprising in Australia than in America. In the New World one is 
accustomed to see woman absolutely free ; she competes with man in 
the exercise of so many professions that however opposed one may be 
in principle to woman suffrage, one is not at first shocked to see her 
exercise it. In Australia the situation of woman is much more like 
that of the English woman than of the American, much freer than on 
the European Continent, but much less free than in the United 
States. The law here has somewhat gone beyond custom, as is often 
the case in the antipodes and in all other countries where professional 
politicians occupy the stage and try to astonish the spectators and to 
create a sensation. If certain classes were agitating themselves and 
clamoring for the extension of the power of voting in the colonies 
which have adopted it, as they are still doing in those which have 
not decided for woman suffrage, the mass of the public, and of the 
feminine public especially, would not care at all about it. In the 
higher classes the indifference of women on this subject is absolute. 
I have had a chance of speaking with a great number of them at 
Melbourne and at Sidney. They have told me without exception 
that they did not care at all about their right of voting. In the 
lower classes, and especially in the smaller middle cla.ss, a great 
number cling to it with much interest, but in general, the only 
women who really care about political emancipation are women of 
letters, professors, governesses, and often those who are separated 
from their husbands, whose private life is unhappy and whose dis¬ 
position is embittered. Usually it is this class that make them.selves 


heard. The greater number remain silent precisely because they 
are indifferent. 

After all, all this feminine movement is little more than a great 
humbug, imagined by politicians in quest of new sensations or by 
fevered brains, but which has yet influenced in Australia two great 
powers? The first is the working class—becau.se the extremes of 
democracy alwa3’s mix the words change and reform—and also 
because the working women, entirely without political education, 
vote exactly as their husbands, which is very important for the 
politicians, while the women of the better class would not vote. The 
second power, which is very great in America, in England, and in all 
Anglo-Saxon countries, is the temperance advocates, or rather the 
prohibitionists, who believe in the complete suppression of the selling 
or buying of alcoholic drinks, and to which the help of woman is 
indispensable. If the women in the middle and lower classes are 
more anxious for suffrage than those in the higher classes, it is be¬ 
cause they feel upon their fathers, their hu.sbands and their brothers 
the fearful influence of alcohol, and that they and their children are 
the first to suffer from it. However, if the women in Australia are 
not especially anxious for suffrage, and any keen obser\^er must 
admit that they are not, yet they use their right with great earnest¬ 
ness as soon as it has been granted to them. At the elections of the 
28th of November, 1893, in New Zealand, the first, and until now, 
the only ones in that colony under the new regime, of 139,915 women 
over 21 years of age 109,461 which means 78^ per cent had been 
registered, and 90,290 or 64 1-5 per cent had taken part in the 
elections. The proportion of men who had voted was a little stronger, 
being 72}^ per cent. The question of the sale of alcoholic liquors 
had played an important part in the campaign, and the Parliament 
elected at that time voted new laws controlling more severely the sale 
of spirits. The prohibitioni.sts had, therefore, obtained part of the 
results which they desired, and now continue to support in other 
colonies the suffrage movement. How^ever important it may be to 
put a stop to the plague of alcoholism, yet it is very grave to make a 
social and political reform as serious as the admission of Woman to 
the privilege of the ballot, not because of what it is worth in itself, 
but for the causes which it may produce. The prohibitionists and 
the working class, without the support of which women never could 
have obtained their political rights, have seen in this change only 
greater means to increase their number. This is an example of the 
greatest evil of modern government—the subordination of all things 
to the ballot—the voting on graver measures without considering 
their intrinsic qualities and their future consequences, simply because 


of some petty immediate results, and for the little advantage that 
they can bring to the parties that have upheld them. That very 
enthusiasm of women in favor of prohibition, which has won for them 
the sympathies of all temperance parties, does it not come from the 
side of their nature which is precisely the one that makes their suffrage 
undesirable ? Does it not show their tendency to decide, not by 
reason but by sentiment, and that they go to extremes without using 
any judgment? Is it not, above all, a proof of their love for that 
grandmotherly legislation which would like to protect men against 
all danger and temptation, carefully surrounding them with all the 
cares and watching of their childhood, or in short, to keep them tied 
to their apron-strings ? Often I have heard Australian women ask, 
“If we bring up our children to. vote, why should we not vote our¬ 
selves?” Is it not precisely because, in applying to grown men the 
principles which direct the education of small children that one would 
necessarily weaken the boldness, the individual energy, the truly 
virile qualities, that feminine suffrage is so datigerous ? “The people 
of this country are incapable of doing anything without the govern¬ 
ment,” said to me with a shade of disdain an American with whom 
I was travelling in New Zealand. The elections of 1893, in which 
women voted for the first time, have done nothing but strengthen the 
socialist element which governs that colony. 

There are curious contradictions among the promoters of 
suffrage. They are advanced people who have continually in their 
mouth the great name of Darwin and the theory of evolution. Why 
do the}^ pretend to make in one day woman the equal of man when 
her subordinate position for centuries has made her a very different 
creature ? In New Zealand they are founding now schools or leagues 
for the political education of women, and that not at all in the inferior 
classes. This was told me by one of them who was president of a 
league and who was the wife of an ex-minister and a great advocate 
of suffrage. Would it not have been better to begin this education 
before putting the ballot in their hands ? It is strange also that these 
same people who advocate the equality of both sexes and demand the 
admission of woman to all professions, on the other hand, protest 
strongly against women being employed in manufactories, on the 
ground that it is injurious to their health and that it prevents them 
from paying attention to their households and destroys the home life. 
A simple working woman, however, will have less pre-occupations 
and when once her day’s work is ended will be freer from care than a 
woman who is a doctor, a law3^er or a politician. Besides, nature 
does not allow woman to bear children and exercrse a trade continu¬ 
ously, Woman is not inferior to man, but is different, that is to 


say, inferior in certain things and superior in others. Then why not 
let her exercise her powers in the sphere in which that superiority 
shows itself to the best advantage ? 

As we have said the laws have gone ahead of traditions in 
Australia, and the proportion of women who work outside their 
homes is less great than in America. The census of 1891 showed 
that of a feminine population of 1,440,000 persons, of which 1,060, 
000 are over 15, 318,000 were bread winners, 133,000 were domestic 
servants, 70,000 were factory girls, 37,000 worked in the fields, 
33,000 were in the liberal professions, 23 000 belonged to the 
commercial class, and 22,000 gave themselves up to different occu¬ 
pations. Unfortunately we do not possess any information relating 
to the occupations of women in previous times, except in the colony 
of New South Wales. Nevertheless it can give an idea of the 
movement which encourages them more and more to make themselves 
independent. In 1881 the total number of women in New South 
Wales was 337,000 ; in 1891 it had increased to 515,000; in that 
same time the number of women earning their living was almost 
doubled going from 48,963 to 89,502. The most remarkable increase 
was that which showed itself in the liberal professions, which in 1881 
occupied 4,288 women and in 1891, 10,402. It is on that side 
especially that woman suffrage encourages them. 

Parallel to that movement there is another which is very serious, 
that is, the lateness of the age of marriage. In 1883 the proportion 
of young married women under twenty-one was in New South Wales 
from 28 to 17 per cent, in 1892 it had fallen to 23.55 per cent. The 
same fact shows it.self in Victoria; between 1881 and 1890 the 
average proportion of young married women under 21 was 21 per 
cent, and of women between 21 and 25, 43.02 per cent. In 1893 the 
corresponding figures were only and 39^. In New Zealand, 
where the married women under age were 29^ per cent of the total 
in 1892, they counted only 19 1-7 per cent in 1893. When a woman 
earns her living herself, and the custom of a country gives a young 
woman great freedom, she is less anxious to be married and often 
marriage would oblige her to give up her position. A merchant in 
New Zealand told me that he employed eighty young women between 
20 and 25; they earned from 25 to 30 francs a week; and notone 
was engaged to be married. And in Australia as in England engage¬ 
ments are often long. If they should get married they would lose 
their places so why should they be in a hurry? They earn their 
living easily and are perfectly independent. Only in marrying late 
children are apt to be less numerous. Without doubt one must not 
sacrifice the independence of woman or forbid her any outside occu- 


pation with the sole object to make child-birth more frequent, but 
it would not do to exaggerate a tendency, which, legitimate and 
proper enough if kept within bounds, might become most dangerous 
if it were exaggerated, and that exaggeration would be inevitably 
produced by woman sulTrage. 

The equality of the sexes is only one more social experience for 
the Australian colonics, and they would not hesitate at any. If they 
despise the traditions of the Old World, they should however not 
forget that their own success, the great prosperit}^ which they have 
so quickly attained, have come from the individual courage and 
energy of the colonists, and from those very qualities which they 
would only weaken in placing all their citizens under an effeminate 
government, and which might help them to overcome the crisis of 
exaggeration where the daring speculations of many years have 
thrown them. We w^ould like to hope that this adventurous legis¬ 
lation is only a passing disease due to too quick a growth and that 
the good practical common sense of the Anglo-Saxon race will 
prevent Australia from going any farther. If it should continue it 
would compromise gravely its future, but then perhaps Europe might 
profit by its example. That is why we have thought that it might 
be interesting to study the sensational experiences with which the 
inhabitants of the antipodes are amusing themselves. 


Adelaide, South Australia, April i6, 1897. ‘“The Federal 
Convention, by a vote of 23 to 12, has rejected an amendment to 
allow women to vote for members of the House of Representatives.” 


Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 13 Elk 
Street, Albany, N. Y. 







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Saturday^ May 8 th^ iSgj. 

From COLORADO. 

To the Editors of the Outlook: 

As it is evident that much has been said in criticism of the 
article by Priscilla lyeonard on “Woman’s Suffrage in Colorado,’’ 
I feel impelled, as a Colorado Woman and a representative of 
many who share my views on this subject, to dissent from the 
critics. Barring a few slight errors in fact, which did not 
essentially affect the argument, I believe it presented truthfully 
and in a spirit exceptionally fair, the result of the experiment 
as thus far shown in Colorado. It is a mistake to suppose that 
a large majority of the women in this State are now enthusiastic 
believers in woman suffrage. I do not know one who was 
opposed to it before its adoption—and the number included 
very many intelligent and conscientious women, unfortunately 
for the most part silent—who has reversed her judgment as to 
its advisability in the last three years, while I know many, 
who at that time favored the movement, who now say 
openly that the}^ regard participation in politics as a burden¬ 
some and uncongenial duty, with no compensating advantage 
to the sex or the State. 

A lady correspondent for a prominent New York daily, 
summing up her observations after election last November, 
says : “ Of the thirty-five women with whom I talked in the 
hill districts’’ (the most intelligent part of Denver) “twenty 
were directly against woman suffrage. Of the other fifteen, ten 
were enthusiastic supporters ; the others were undecided.’’ 

CHARLOTTE M. VAILE. 


Denver, Colorado. 




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150,000 m the estate entitled to vote, it registered, probably not more than 10,000 
have gone on the registr}^ list during the last two years, and of these a large 
number registered under the urgency of the woman “workers” rather than by 
original and voluntary impulse. In many towns there have been very few women 
registered or none at all, and apart from sectarian movements in each year, the 


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Mrs. Wilriam Bayard Van Rensselakr, Mrs. Joel R. Reed. 

Secretary. Mrs. Wm. O. Stieeman 

Mrs. Joseph Gavit, Mrs. Frederick Townsend. 

Treasurer. Executive Coimnitfp-p- 




MRS. CREIGHTON’S APPEAL. 


[Mrs. Creighton is the wife of the Bishop who has recently been 
translated from the diocese of Peterborough to that of London. 
She is noted for her executive ability, as well as her literary talent. 
Her History of France and England and her historical biographies 
are well known. The following extracts are taken from her article 
on Female SuiBfrage in the Nineteenth Century:] 


The advocates of female suffrage seem to labor under two delu¬ 
sions: First, that the vote is a good in itself; and, secondly, that 
change is necessarily progress, and must be welcomed, at any price, 
by all who do not wish to remain hopelessly behind. Mrs. Ashton 
Dilke, indeed, acknowledges that the vote is not an end in itself, but 
only a means to an end. But she does not say to what end; she only 
says that, without a vote, we “risk the loss of all those improvements 
in the position of our sex” which have been obtained. Such a state¬ 
ment implies a hostility between the sexes from which society seems 
to be happily free; and it is not easily to believe that the day will 
ever come when men will take away from’ women what has been 
proved to be good both for them and for the whole community. 
There is surely no need to feel that we have won a position from an 
active foe, which we must maintain at the risk of our lives. 

The vote is supposed to have a certain magical power. Mrs. 
Dilke even knows why it was originally given, and when she 
says that the vote “was certainly originally intended to give effect 
to the opinions of the quiet orderly citizen instead of leaving power 
in the hands of the strong and warlike,” she has solved a problem 
which has long baffled the ingenuity of the constitutional historian. 
The attitude of many of the advocates of female suffrage seems to 
suppose an ideal woman, working side by side with an ideal man in 
an ideal system of politics. But we have to do with realities; there 
is a great deal of work to be done, and the practical question is how 
to do it. It has yet to be proved that giving women the vote will 
enable them to do better in the future the work which they have 
neglected in the past. 





There is no magic about the vote; it is merely a necessary part 
of the machinery of government. The act of voting is not, as some 
would wish to make it, the chief way in which the individual can 
share in the work of the State for the good of all. The question is 
not whether women are not as qualified to vote as men. We are ver}^ 
tired of the rich and cultivated lady who may not vote whilst her 
coachman may. If the vote was the privilege of the wise and the 
educated, many women might justly claim it. But it is the propelling 
power of a part of the machinery of government which has always 
belonged to one sex. 

The present organization of society offers an abundant field for 
the energies of women. The fields are white for the harvest, and 
the reapers are few. The pursuit of female suffrage as the first aim 
offers a wrong ideal to women; the desire to play an active part in 
politics make them neglect their own work. It is perfectly true that 
women in the last few years have formed political organizations for 
the purpose of influencing public opinion; but many of them regard 
such organizations as only a temporary nature, justified by a period 
of exceptional difficulty. I am not concerned with defending the 
wisdom or expediency of such societies; but it is no discredit to 
those who have joined them if they frankly admit that their experi¬ 
ence of the results of their activity does not make them wish to ex¬ 
tend it universally. There is much to be said for women discussing 
amongst themselves' political and social questions, investigating 
points concerned with the labour and education of women, and sug¬ 
gesting grievances to be remedied. Their formulated opinion will be 
sure to meet with respectful attention. , But the more women stand 
apart from the machinery of party organization, the more weighty 
and influental will be the expression of their opinions. 

The more women take an active part in politics the more consid¬ 
erations of sex will be used as one of the means of obtaining politi¬ 
cal influence. We may try to change society, we cannot change 
nature; sex will remain. The advocates of female suffrage, indeed, 
speak of women as a class, and as such demand that they be repre¬ 
sented in Parliament. We answer that they are not a class but a 
sex, and that our representative system knows nothing of classes as 
such. We urge that women should be content to continue working 
side by side with men, possessing their own duties and their own 
opportunities. We think that the questionable advantage of a direct 
representation of such interests as women may be supposed to have 
made peculiarly their own, would be dearly bought by an experiment 
which would shake the very basis of human society. 

The present need is that women should do their own work bet¬ 
ter. For the married and the mothers the path is comparatively 
plain, but no one could say that they have yet risen to a full sense 


of their responsibilities in training useful members of the com¬ 
munity. For those who, from circumstances or choice, are compelled 
to carry on their struggle alone the opportunities of doing useful 
work are unlimited. I am not speaking now of paid work; there 
the question is more difficult, and the possession of the franchise 
would not solve it. But the community can never have too large a 
number of devoted and unselfish workers in every line. The women 
who show their capacity for such work never fail to get it. But 
women need to train their practical abilities, to show their capacity. 
We want more women guardians, more women on school boards, 
more women who will investigate the existing conditions of society. 
What the future may need we cannot say, and it would be rash 1o 
say that the time may not come when in an ideal political system the 
ideal woman may work side by side with the ideal man. 

The power of woman’s influence cannot be measured. When I 
speak of influence, I do not mean a conscious definite desire to 
guide another in some particular direction, but the effect produced 
upon man by a nature which he believes to be purer, nobler, more 
unselfish than his own. Sex is a fact—no act of Parliament can 
eliminate it—and woman, as woman, must be a power for good or 
evil over man. In her hands rests the keeping of a pure tone in 
society, of a high standard of morality, of a lofty devotion to duty 
in political life. 

It is given her to make or mar a man’s life; she may not care 
for the power—she may wish she did not possess it; but she cannot 
escape from its responsibilities. Would not the wise course be, to 
try to make herself such a woman that her influence may lift all 
those with whom she comes in contact ? She need not have wealth 
or position to do this. Beside the struggling, toiling women are 
struggling, toiling men; each lonely worker is a power in her little 
sphere; she will be a greater power if she is not struggling for her 
rights, but is trying to live her own life nobly and unselfishly. 

Mrs. Dilke says that we who do not want the vote are like those 
who will not open the door to go into a concert hall to hear beauti¬ 
ful music, but content themselves with the faint echoes that reach 
them through the windows. We might retort by saying that those 
women who, not content with what they have, still demand the 
franchise, are like those who, deaf through misfortune or their own 
fault, stand within the concert hall but cannot hear the music. 



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DEFEAT OF WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE IN STATE 
OF WASHINGTON. 


From Porti^and “Oregonian,” of 12th Nov., 1898. 

The woman suffrage amendment was buried in the same grave 
with the single-tax proposition by the voters of Washington on 
Tuesday. Political suffrage for woman is a slowly dying cause, and 
it is dying because it is without excuse for further existence. The 
real wrongs of women which existed when Lucy Stone began her 
agitation in 1847 have mostly been redressed by legislation. To-day 
every political principle advocated at the outset is enjoyed by women, 
save full suffrage, and every legal right sought by Lucy Stone has 
been granted to women. They are even treated with partiality by 
the laws, compared with men. Their individuality is not lost in 
marriage, as it was when Mrs. Stanton, who is now over 80, was a 
young girl. Every avenue of activity is open to them : they are as 
free as men to earn their living in any lawful way they please. The 
conjugal, parental and property rights of women have been recog¬ 
nized and established by the political action of men without the aid 
of woman suffrage, simply because the vast mass of influential women 
and public opinion thought that the best way. The present situation 
is totally different from that of forty years ago, when “woman’s 
rights” was a genuine cause, because there were genuine woman’s 
wrongs to be righted and legal disabilities to be removed. The 
agitation and the organized effort begun more than fifty years ago 
had much to do with the recognition and redress of these wrongs, 
legal disabilities and inequalities ; but with the accomplishment of 
these reforms the cause of woman suffrage has made no real progress. 
Its modern revival in Kansas, Colorado and Idaho was but 
the out-growth of the temporary socialistic spirit that prevails in 
those States. 

The lack of the ballot surely robs a woman of no rights of life, 
libertj^ or property. The reason why woman suffrage is not favored 
by the mass of women or the mass of men is because it is a barren 
ideality. It rights no wrongs, it corrects no disability. Women to¬ 
day have without the ballot all the civil and social rights exercised 
by men. As a natural right, suffrage belongs to neither man nor 
woman, for the ballot is only the child of an artificial social order to 
be granted or withheld as a matter of social and political expediency. 
The mere wish of a few women to vote is of no more consequence to 
the State than the mere wish of a few women to enlist in the regular 
army. That Moll Pitcher served her wounded husband’s gun at 
Monmouth is not an argument for the expediency of enlisting women 
as artillerymen. 






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Does Suffrage Work Pay? 


The annual report of the New York State Woman Suffrage 
Association shows by the treasurer’s report that the receipts for the 
year were $3,261.77 ; and the disbursements were $3,061.24 ; there 
were 132 membership fees and dues from 28 counties of $450.30. 
Chautauqua county leads with $79. Albany, the capital county, 
makes a poor showing with $7. The expenses were largely the 
salaries paid for organizing and legislative work. Miss Harriet M. 
Mills received $680 ; Miss Julia R. Jenny, $25 ; Miss Harriet A. 
Keyser, $81.28, and Miss Emma Taylor, $50.25, making an 
aggregate of $836.53 for organizing during the year. Mrs. Martha 
R. Almy received $455.75 for legislative work. Miss Anthony 
received $25, and Mrs. Greenleaf $50, and Mrs. Searing $33, while 
Miss Babcock was paid $90.89 for press work. 

The report on organization is not particularly cheerful for the 
amount of time and money expended. The chairman organized four 
counties, eleven locals and four committees ; and in answer to the 
question whether the work was permanent, acknowledges that 
“experience shows that it is impossible to insure the permanence of 
many of the new clubs. ’ ’ She speaks of ‘ ‘the apathy of the women, ’ ’ 
“the unwillingness of women to take office, and above all, the lack 
of conscience about answering letters. ’ ’ 

The chairman of the legislative committee reports that on account 
of clerical error in the suffrage resolution passed last year, the “final 
submission” is “necessary postponed” until 1899. But she 
consoles her hearers with the statement that “in the minds of the 
committee the chances of carrying the measure at the polls will be 
better in 1899, or later, than next year.” 






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The chairman of the press committee reports the expenses 
of her work as $109.30 She says that the articles sent out were 
received more readily than she had hoped, as the American Press 
Association thought, in answer to her request that they use suffrage 
articles, that there was no demand for them ; .and the publishers of 
“patent insides” also refused to take articles for the same reason. 
She then tells of her personal efforts with editors, and she adds, “My 
plan has been to obtain men and women of prominence to write 
short articles upon the various phases of the woman question. 
With some editors the suffrage points must be cunningly disguised, 
but they are there just the same.” 

Altogether the report makes interesting reading, even to an 
Anti —Albany Evening Journal^ February 1896. 




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Do not want the Ballot. 


A Correspondent Who is Opposed to Making 
Them Voters. 


To the Editor of the New York Tribuve: 

One of the arguments of the anti-suffragist is that if women be 
allowed to vote, the corrupt or purchasable vote of women—which 
even a suffrage fanatic would not be so unwise as to imply would 
not exist—would be used as the purchasable male vote is now used— 
to further selfish ends and promote unwise and corrupt legislation. 

This is often met by the statement that the women in the 
country districts will overbalance any preponderance of ignorant 
and vicious votes that may obtain in our city wards. The fallacy 
of this argument shows plainly upon the face of it. If the male vote 
of the country can not counteract or overwhelm the corrupt male 
vote of the cities, how will the condition of things be bettered by 
doubling, not only the vote of the country, but that of the city ? 

But what will the ballot mean to the women in the country ? 
Nothing at all, except physical discomfort. In the first place, it 
will necessitate their registering, on one of two days, at the place of 
registry, which, in many instances, will be at least five miles from 
their homes. The variation of weather, which to-day is one of the 
elements of political uncertainty, will be a strong factor in the polling 
of the female ballot, particularly in the country. 

If the day of registration be fair, it is just possible that husband, 
wife, sons and daughters, with the “hired help,” male and female, 
and the baby, and the small children, who cannot be left at home 
alone, will drive to the village tavern, where the registration is 
usually held, and register; and that, on the coming “election day,” 
they will all be bundled together again in the farmer’s wagon and 
be driven to the same tavern to cast their ballots. 








2 

But what will they do if it rains, or snows, or the baby is ill, or 
one of the members of the family is an invalid ? Will the men drive 
to the polls and back, and then send the women to register, and again 
to vote ? And what will those women do whose fathers or husbands 
have no horses, and there are many of those in the little villages in 
country towns ? Even the men often have to beg rides to and from 
the polling place. 

But for the sake of the argument, suppose all the women in the 
country register and vote, what will be the result ? After having 
talked with scores yf country women on the subject, I am willing to 
•affirm that each woman would vote as her father or husband voted, 
and that the result obtained would be only a double number of 
Democratic and a double number of Republican votes cast, and these 
would be expected to offset a doubled ignorant and corrupt vote in 
the city ! 

Would not the condition of things to-day obtain in greater force? 
The intelligent women of the country who have not been bitten by 
the tarantula of Unrest do not want the ballot, and would not use it 
if they had it; and this assertion I make advisedly and upon authority. 

AIvBAny, March 22^ i8p6. • E. S. C. 




MR. DEREW ANSWERED. 


Ills Address to Women Graduates Criticised by an 
Albany Woman. 


A FLIGHT OF IMAGINATION. 


IVIR. DEPEVV WAS GUILTY OF ONE, MRS. W. WINSLOW CRANNELL vSAYS, 
WHEN HE SUGGESTS THAT MAN DOES HIS WORK BETTER 
THAN WOMAN DOES HERS, AND THAT WOMEN HAVE 
ALWAYS labored AND ARE STILL LABORING 
UNDER A TERRIFIC DISADVANTAGE. 


To the Editor of The Albany Argus: 

The Hon. Channce}" M. Depew, in an address to the forty-seven 
women who received their diplomas as bachelors of law from the 
University of the City of New York on April 29, said in part : “The 
familiar idea through all time has been that the sphere of woman was 
in the house and in the domestic circle.” This Mr. Depew depre¬ 
cated—‘‘Fortunately for our country and ourtimes,” he said, “women 
are in evidence in every department of our American life.” 

Mr. Depew, as an argument to advance his theory, said: “In 
the complex conditions of our civilization there are as many women 
as men dependent upon their own resources to make a living, or 
their own brains and judgment to protect and care for property. 
That women fail to receive the same remuneration as their brothers, 
that their services are rewarded with starvation wages, and that the 
courts are crowded with cases of women of property being defrauded, 
deceived and robbed, is due to the continual working of that senseless 
and vicious maxim, written large over the doors of employment and 
education : ‘You cannot pass these portals without becoming 
unsexed.’ ” 







2 


I confess myself puzzled by Mr. Depew’s own words, for just 
before saying this he said, as we have quoted above, that “women 
are in evidence in every department of our American life. They are 
in literature, in journalism, in the professions, in the trades, in art, 
and especially in education.’’ 

Will Mr. Depew kindly explain then what ‘ ‘doors of employment 
and education’’ are closed to women ? Those doors, that opened, 
would relieve them from the terrible condition which he pictures 
above ? Has Mr. Depew forgotten that he said in an address before 
the Working Women’s Protective Union : “ There are one hundred 
thousand working women in this cit}^ and they get on an average 
only about two or three dollars a week, and they have no other 
means of support. For two thousand 37ears Christianity has been 
endeavoring to ameliorate and elevate the condition of women. 
Among savages they are beasts of burden ; among barbarians and 
Mohammedans they are toys and slaves ; but among us, notwith¬ 
standing that my friends, the Woman Suffrage Association, have not 
got all they wanted, woman has every right that man has and every 
privilege, except the right to vote, and the right to vote would not 
protect her in just the things that we are looking after to-night.’’ 

As the society to whom he spoke has for its object “especially 
to provide women with legal protection from the frauds and imposi¬ 
tions of unscrupulous employers,’’ were not “ the things ’’ referred 
to the same as those to which he refers in his later address ? 

Mr. Depew said also : “ If a brother and sister equall}^ equipped 
go out into the world for employment, there are ten places open for 
the brother where there is one for the sister. ’ ’ Does not that fact 
find solution in the assertion that the men do the work better than 
women? Mr. Depew continues: “If there are a thousand hands 
eagerly stretched out for work which requires only a hundred, they 
underbid one another to the point of starvation. Women have 
alwa3^s labored and are still laboring under this terrific disadvantage. 
Had every avenue of employment and every vocation been thrown 
open to her, that saddest poem in literature, ‘The Song of the Shirt,’ 
could never have been written.’’ 

That is a flight of imagination hardly consistent in so thorough 
a man of business as Mr. Depew. First, I would like to ask Mr. 
Depew what “ avenue of employment and vocation’’ is not thrown 
open to women? And next, if there are “avenues of employment 
and vocations ’’ op^n to men which are not open to women,and which, 
if opened to women would work such wonders as Mr. Depew hints 


3 


at, why men are unemployed or employed at starvation wages, or 
why they commit suicide because they can find nothing to do ? 

There are many unwritten poems that are as sad as “The Song 
of the Shirt,” sunken deep in the hearts of men who have faced want 
and penury, not through an unwillingness to work, but because of 
the ‘ ‘thousand hands eagerly stretched out for the work which requires 
only a hundred.” ^ 

Mr. Depew, after several flights of imagination nearly equal to 
the above, says : “When the question of woman suffrage was up in 
Albany last winter, there were more women who appeared against it 
than in favor of it. It was the old cry that for women to vote would 
unsex them. I am not here to advocate on this platform woman 
suffrage, but I have seen hundreds of women educating and caring 
for their children, and maintaining worthless husbands.” Does Mr. 
Depew forget that if the women do so it is simply out of their own 
desire, as the laws of New York State relieve a wife from the support 
of her husband, wdiile they compel the husband to support the wife ? 
Mr. Depew continues, “The only thing I have known these husbands 
to do was to vote.” The thing for Mr. Depew to advocate under these 
circumstances is the relieving of such men of the privilege of voting. 
He cannot, in the face of what he has said before, believing that to 
add to the already overtaxed women he speaks of, the necessity for 
educating themselves up to the needs of their country in’order to vote 
intelligently, would in any way ameliorate their condition. Mr. 
Depew adds : “I know ladies who manage large properties, carry 
on extensive charities, employ great numbers of men as superintend¬ 
ents, gardeners and workmen, and yet the superintendents, the 
gardeners and workmen enact the laws which govern and tax the 
woman whose income, energy and intelligence support them all, 
and she has no voice in the matter.” That reads well; but does 
Mr. Depew intend to imply that when suffrage is given to the wives, 
daughters and sisters of the great number of superintendents, gar¬ 
deners and workmen that a better condition of things would prevail 
for tl:^^t woman ? 

Mr. Depew is mistaken when he says that the opposition to 
woman suffrage is founded on “ the old cry ” of unsexing women. 
The condition of things to-day in the political, social and moral 
world is such as to appall the earnest thinker. In the political world 
the ballot of every man whom Mr. Depew employs, no matter what 
his degree of intelligence regarding any one theory of government 
and another may be, has as much influence upon public policy as 


4 


does that of Mr. Depevv ; and men whose utmost notion of fidelity to 
duty at the polls is to cast their ballot as the “boss” bids outnumber 
Mr. Depew and the men of his intelligence largely. If this is not so, 
why do we vSuffer from corrupt legislation ? Mr. Depew derides the 
attitude of our forefathers regarding women. The people derided 
the fundamental principle established by our forefathers that the 
nation’s sjffety must depend upon restricting the suffrage to those 
who should be, presumabl}^ most competent to exercise and gave 
suffrage to thirteen millions of men without any restrictive clause as 
regards intelligence. Does Mr. Depew believe that when as many 
millions of women possess the power of influencing public policy by 
their ballot that either the women or the State will be benefited ? 
Does he not know, judging by what universal male suffrage has done 
for the country, that universal female suffrage would be a hazardous 
experiment to try ? Inasmuch as Mr. Depew says that “ women 
have every right that man has and every privilege except the right 
to vote.” 

There are social and moral reforms that women understand, and 
for which no legislation is needed ; or, if it be shown that there is, 
can be obtained without woman’s ballot ; these reforms are still to be 
made. Here is an avenue for the unrest that threatens to “create a 
new order of things. ” For these women who do not find their 
greatest pleasure as well as their greatest duty in the care of their 
homes, the strengthening and comforting of their husbands to fit 
them for their outside duties, the education and ChrivStian influencing 
of their sons and daughters, together with the charitable work that 
pleads for recognition, there are, as Mr. Depew has said, “every 
right that man has, and every privilege” awaiting them. They may 
join their sisters “in literature, in journalism, in the professions, in 
the trades, in art, and in education,” but it were well for wise men 
and women to pause to ask themselves seriously what condition of 
things would obtain if all women were given suffrage, before they 
hold up “ the right to vote” as a panacea for want of employment, 
for low wages, for unrest, and unhappiness. 

MRS. W. WINSDOW CRANNETL. 

AIvBANy, N. Y., May z, 1896. 


(V>« /• 


Extracts from an Article by the 
Rev. J. M. Buckley, 

-O N- 

The Wrongs and Perils of Woman Suffrage. 


In an argument in favor of giving suffrage to women, a senator 
of Massachusetts brought forward as an example of intellectual and 
moral fitness for the franchise Mrs. Clara Leonard, whom he justly 
characterized as the highest living authority on private and public 
charities. Mrs. Leonard has recently thus expressed her wisdom on 
the value of the ballot to woman: “It is the opinion of many of us 
that woman’s power is greater without the ballot or possibility of 
office holding for gain, when standing outside of politics she discusses 
great questions on their merits. Much has been achieved by woman 
for the anti-slavery cause, temperance, the improvement of public 
and private charities, the reformation of criminals and by intelligent 
discussion and influence upon man. Our legislators have been ready 
to listen to women and carry out their plans when well formed. 

^ ^ 5{C ^ 

To her name I add that of “the most useful and distinguished 
woman that America has produced’’, whose influence is felt through¬ 
out the world upon every sphere of philanthropy and is preserved 
in the laws of every civilized nation, Dorothea L. Dix. She saw the 
rise of the American Woman’s Suffrage movement, studied it in its 
advocate’s arguments, sentiments and tendencies, and rejected it. 
Her biographer states that she believed in “ ‘woman’s keeping her¬ 
self apart from anything savoring of ordinary political action, She 
must be the incarnation of a purely disinterested idea, appealing 
to universal humanity, irrespective of party or sect’ “. 










% 




Extracts from an Article by the 
Rev. J. M. Buckley, 


-O N- 

The Wrongs and Perils of Woman Suffrage. 


Woman suffrage cannot achieve what its advocates expect. 
They think that it will reform public morals, close the saloon and 
other places of evil resort, and realize absolute prudence, honesty 
and economy in management. Laws that do not carry the votes of a 
majority of the men in a community cannot be enacted. That under 
ordinary circumstances the instincts of women would be in favor of 
good laws there is no doubt : but how far their temperaments would 
affect the character of special enactments, and how far their personal 
prejudices and prepossessions would affect their political action are 
practical questions of moment. “Women will always vote against 
war, and thus put an end to it in the world. They will not send 
their husbands, fathers, brothers and friends to slaughter.” Does 
history support this statement ? Wherever there has been a war 
women have been as much interested as men. They have even 
encouraged their husbands, fathers, brothers and lovers to enlist, 
and would have despised them if they had not. In the last war in 
this country the women on both sides were more intense and irrecon¬ 
cilable than the men. 

In England, w'hen women first appeared upon the hustings, they 
were received with the old chivalry, but in recent elections, the 
contest being fierce, all respect has disappeared. Noted women were 
treated most disrespectfully in the very heart of London, and people 
of all parties agree that England has never seen so much participation 
of women or such rude treatment of them as in the last election. In 
Wales, Mrs. Cornwallis West tried to quell a disturbance, but was 
silenced by yells and hisses, and was finally compelled to retire from 
the platform. 

Should the suffrage be extended to women, the grant can never 
be recalled. Experiments in legislating upon economic questions, 
even if unwise, need not be permanently harmful, for they may be 
repealed ; but in dealing with the suffrage or moral question, new 
laws, if bad, are exceedingly dangerous. They will develop a class 
lowered in tone or deriving personal, pecuniary or political advantages 
from the new environment, who will vehemently declare that the 
effect of the innovation is beneficial and resist all efforts to return to 
the former state. Should the duty of governing in the state be 







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MR. GLADSTONE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


Extract from his Letter to Samuel Smith, M. P. 


There has never within my knowledge been a case in which 
the franchise has been extended to a large body of persons generally 
indifferent about receiving it. But here, in addition to a widespread 
indifference, there is on the part of women who have considered the 
matter for themselves, the most positive objection and strong dis¬ 
approbation. Is it not clear to every unbiased person, that before 
forcing on them what they conceive to be a fundamental change in 
their whole social function, at least it should be ascertained that the 
womanly mind of the country is in overwhelming proportion, and 
with deliberate purpose, set upon securing it ? * * * * * >:< 

************1 think it impossible to 
deny that there have been and are women individually fit for any 
public office however masculine its character; just as there are 
persons under the age of twenty-one better fitted than many of those 
beyond it for the discharge of the duties of full citizenship. In 
neither case does the argument derived from exceptional instances 
seem to justify the abolition of the general rule. I for one am not 
prepared to say which of the two sexes has the higher and which 
has the lower province. But I recognize the subtle and profound 
character of the difference between them, and I must again, and 
again, deliberate before aiding in the issue of what seems an invi¬ 
tation by public authority to the one to renounce as far as possible 
its own office, in order to assume that of the other. * * 

tliis is uot a party 

question, or a class question so neither is it a sex question. I have 
no fear lest the woman should encroach upon the power of the man. 
The fear I have is, lest we should invite her unwillingly to trespass 
upon the delicacy, the purity, the refinement, the elevation of her 
own nature, which are the present sources of its power. * * 

My disposition is to do all for her which is free from danger and 
reproach, but to take no step in advance until I am convinced of its 
safety. The stake is enormous. The affirmation pleas are to my 
mind not clear, and, even if I thought them clearer, I should deny 
that they were pressing. 

Very faithfully yours, 

W. E. GLADSTONE.” 








JAMES T. GARDINER, an eminent scientific and 
business man, spoke in regard to what he has observed in 
his constant visits to Kansas as to results of woman suffrage. 

“The first year or two, women took little interest in 
the municipal elections. Then one party put up a man of 
questionable reputation as mayor, the other party nominated 
a man of spotless character. Soon the latter’s friends found 
that the other party were enlisting all the negro women of 
the city to their cause by sympathy and by bribes. We 
then saw that all would be lost if we could not arouse our 
wives and sisters to their duty as enfranchised women to 
vote for the pure election. They at first demurred, but we 
showed them what a disastrous effect upon the city it would 
be in every way should the other candidate be elected. Soon 
they became interested and began canvassing around amongst 
their neighbors. Constantly they increased in enthusiasm 
and numbers, until finally people who had been friends and 
neighbors for years would not speak, and the whole history 
of each candidate, with that of their ancestors and followers, 
was discUvSsed in every household, even before its youngest 
members. Women had caught the fever of politics and it 
raged high and furiously. For over a month before election 
day, the w^hole dirty stream of politics flowed over my hearth¬ 
stone, washing away all the quiet, happiness and peace 
which had reigned there before. And, as a climax, on elec¬ 
tion day we saw our wives and daughters driving through 
the city, picking up women of the lowest possible class and 
morality, and then walking with their arm around them to 
the polls to see that they voted rightly. Every means of 


intimidation, bribery and cajolery which had been used by 
men was employed unhesitatingly by women on election 
day. and yet when the votes were counted the result was no 
different than if they had remained quietly at home, without 
the ballot. The effect on Teavenworth society has been 
most disastrous.” 

Such is the fear of the Anti-Suffragists of what would 
occur to New York State, should women vote* 

Officers of the Anti-Suffrage Association of the 3rd 
Judicial District of the State of New York : 

Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, 

President. 

Mrs. WiIvIvIam J. Wai.i.ack, 

ist Vice-President. 

Mrs. Wm. Bayard Van Rknssrdaer, 

Secretary. 

Mrs. Joseph Gavit, 

Treasurer, 

Mrs. W. Winseow Cranneee, 

Chairman. 

Mrs. Krastus Corning, 

Mrs. j. Howard King, 

Mrs. Joee R. Reed, 

Mrs. Wieeiam Cassidy, 

Mrs. Wm. O. Stieeman, 

Mrs. Frederick Townsend, 

Miss Tucy A. Peympton, 

Executive Committee. 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 
13 Elk Street, Albany, N. Y. 


LETTER TO Rev’d DR. J. M. BUCKLEY. 


When about thirty years of age I accepted for a time 
the doctrine of woman suffrage, and publicly defended it. Years 
of wide and careful observation have convinced me that the 
demand for woman suffrage in America is without foundation 
in equity, and, if successful, must prove harmful to American 
society. I find some worthy women defending it, but the 
majority of our best women, especially our mo.st intelligent, 
domestic, and godly mothers, neither ask for nor desire it. 
The instinct of motherhood is against it. The basal convic¬ 
tion of our best manhood is against it. The movement is at 
root a protest against the representative relations and functions 
by virtue of which each sex depends upon and is exalted by 
the other. This theory and policy, tending to the subversion 
of the natural and divine order, must make man less a man, 
and woman less a woman. A distinguished woman advocate 
of this suffrage movement says, “We need the ballot to protect 
us against men.” When one sex is compelled thus to protect 
itself against the other, the foundations of society are already 
crumbling. Woman now makes man what he is. She con¬ 
trols him as babe, boy, manly son, brother, lover, husband, 
father. Her influence is enormous. If she use it wisely, she 
needs no additional power. If she abu.se her opportunity she 
deserves no additional responsibility. Her womanly weight, now 
without measure, will be limited to the value of a single ballot, 
and her control over from two to five additional votes forfeited. 

The curse of America to-day is in the dominated par¬ 
tisan vote, the vote of ignorance and superstition. Shall we help 
matters by doubling this dangerous mass ? Free from the direct 
complications and passions of he political arena, the best 
women may exert a conservative and moral influence over men 
as voters. Force her down into the same bad atmosphere, 
and both man and woman must inevitably suffer incalculable 
loss. ^ We know what woman can be in the “commune”, in 
“riots”, and on the “rostrum”. 

Woman can, through the votes of men, have every right to 
which she is entitled. All she has man has gladly given her. 
It is his glory to repre.sent her. To rob him of this right 
is to weaken both. He and she are just now in danger 
through his mistaken courtesy. 

JOHN H. VINCENT. 

Topeka, Kansas, April i8, 1894. 







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To flic Hon. Henry IV. Blair, U. S. SenatorJroni Nezv Hampshire. 

Dear Sir, —During the last week of the last session of Congress, I 
received, under cover of your own frank, a copy of your Report of the 
Select Coinniittee on Woman Suffrage, delivered to the Senate of the 
United States, Dec. 8, 1886. In it you make a lengthy quotation from a 
pamphlet of mine, entitled “Detters from a Chimney Corner.” It 
appears to me that in the argument drawn from this quotation you mistake 
utterly the point at issue, and it is my purpose in this letter to direct 
3’our attention to this mistake, and to put the argument upon its proper 
basis. I shall also comment upon certain other considerations put forth 
therein. 

The quotation referred to is too long for the limits of a letter like this. 
The argument briefly is, that neither the man nor the woman is individ¬ 
ual! v’ the representative of the [jenna home, but that, according to nature 
and revelation, the two united make one, and that to each constituent 
of that union certain distinct powers and properties belong, each 
dependent upon the other, in a minor way, for proper fulfillment. You 
say, ‘Tf upon this account woman is to be denied suffrage, then man 
ec[uall3’ should be denied the ballot, if his highest and final estate is to 
be something else than a mere individual.” 

Now, marriage is that partnership upon which the right order of 
societv' and the right of perpetuation of the species depends. The que.s- 
tion is, whether each partner .shall keep to that line, of labor which 
Nature has marked out, or whether of woman shall be demanded, not 
only her own .share of the labor, but also a large part of that wliich 
belongs to man. For, let us notice, that while it may be granted that 
woman has the ph\'sical capacity to cast a ballot, man has not the ph\’s_ 
ical capacity to bear and nouri.sh children. Nature has made it forever 
impossible that he should perform that office. If, therefore, he demands 
of her that .she shall participate in those external and general duties, such 1 
as labor for the support of the home and for the direction of the state,* 
which his natural constitution, physical and intellectual, fit him for, 
while he cannot b}* any possibility relieve her of tho.se most neces.sary 
offices and duties which Nature demands of her, he commits a pali)al)le 
and mon.strous inju.stice. 

Nor does it help the matter to .say, as you do, that, becau.se woman’s 
nature is purer and nobler than man’s, the State would be benefited by 
her participation in political affairs. If men are not capable of managing 
the affairs of the State according to the highest and best ideas of the race, 
that is, of both men and women, will you permit me respectfully to 
impiire what proper and adequate .share of this world’s work they can 
perform ? What is their natural place in the order of society ? Are they 
mere hewers of wood and drawers of water ? They cannot bear citizens ; 
they cannot care for them in infancy and rear them to manhood. If 
they cannot govern them with wisdom and jmstice when they are pro¬ 
duced ready made to their hands, what is their reason for being? When 
a man stands up in the United States Senate, and makes such a statement 
as that, in regard to the men of this republic, it appears to me that he 


com])roinises his own self-respect, and the respect due to the dignified 
and honorable body to which he has been elevated. 

You say that you have only proposed the measure because women 
have asked you to do it. The same plea was made by your great pro¬ 
genitor in the Garden of Eden ; but it did not avail him. Moreover, in 
the case of Adam it was true. In the present instance the plea contains 
but the minimum of truth. There are fifteen millions of women in this 
country tl quote your own statistics) of voting age. Will you kindly 
inform us what proportion of that fifteen millions you have heard from ? 
You say that these women as being governed without their consent. Is 
it possible that you can sincerely believe that fifteen millions of Ameri¬ 
can women could be governed without their consent ? Do 3-011 not rather 
feel assured that if a bare niajorit3- of that number did not consent, for 
what appear to them to be good and sufficient reasons, to be governed b}- 
indirect rather than direct representation, there would be a revolution 
within twent3--four hours ? With ever}^ right of agitation at their com¬ 
mand which man possesses,—free speech, free assembly, the right of 
petition, a press ever read}- to disseminate their views, and man}- privi¬ 
leges of courtesy besides, that men la}" no claim to,—What power could 
withstand the moral force of any demand which these fifteen millions 
should unitedly make? 

With what show of reason do you compare free-born American women 
to the degraded and ignorant slaves on vSouthern plantations, and speak 
of men as their masters? As a matter of fact the power of men over 
women is not greater than that of women over men. Nature lays the 
infant man a helpless creature in the lap of his mother. He is in her/ 
power for life or for death, and for the first ten or fifteen years of his( 
existence, and that during the forming and determining period ofhis\ 
career, a period too, in which he is answerable to no other law than that 
of his home, her power over him, physical, intellectual, and moral, is so 
nearly .supreme, that no power which he can arrogate over her in later 
years can overbalance it. Under ordinary circum.stances the faithful, 
intelligent mother may make of her .son, in all the es.sentials of manners 
and morals, whatsoever she will. If American men were to-day the 
narrow-minded, tyrannical, vicious creatures they are charged with 
being by the woman .suffragists, unfitted to be legislators for the whole : 
nation, it could only be becau.se their mothers had misunderstood or 
, neglected the opportunities which Nature puts into their hand.s. Such 
.a charge is tremendous indictment against the motherhood of the nation, 
jand, if it could be sustained, ought of itself to bar women from all 
legislative functions until they can better fulfil that which Nature 
demands of them in child-bearing and rearing. Moreover, it is the i 
function of slaves to labor ; but it is this nation’s pride and boast that in 
no other country that the sun shines on are there so many homes supported 
by the loyal and untiring industry of men, where women are kept in 
e^se and comfort, in order that they may give their time to the higher 
duties of rearing children and planning and carrying on enterprises of 
charity, philanthropy, and reform ; and the influence of these homes 
upon public sentiment is the one irre.sistible power in American .social and 


political life. Plainly, if any portion of the American people are slaves 
it is not the women. 

But let us return to the question of physical adaptability of women to 
the duties of voters. If women vote, they must also hold office and assume 
the working duties incident to political campaigns. It appears from 
the published record of your life that 3’on commenced your political 
career at about the age of thirty. For the next ten or fifteen 3’ears yon 
were active!}- in politics. Now, will you tell me if you think it would 
have been convenient or agreeable during those years, when von were 
laying the foundations of your political success, to have been also engaged 
in bearing and rearing a family ? Could yon have done what yon found 
it necessary to do politically, and at the same time have attended 
properly to your duties as wife and mother ? Yon will say that the very 
indelicate, and I agree with yon, but the fault is in the situ¬ 
ation as proposed by you. The duties and offices of motherhood are all 
sweet, and pure, and holy, when kept within the sacred precincts of the 
ho!ne. Brought out into the garish light of publicity what do they 
become ? 

Nor will it avail you to say that some part of these offices may be 
delegated to servants. There are too many mothers of that sort in the 
country now ; no political measure can be a wise one which tends to 
increase their number. 

You say in your Report that there are many women who are not wives 
and mothers. Very true, and when women vote and hold office, there 
will be more of them, A true regard for the be.st interests of .society 
demands that their number .shall be reduced by all natural aud reasonable 
means ; but when political rewards are offered as the price of services in 
public life, do yon not believe that many, and those not of the weak and 
ignorant, but of the more gifted and intellectual, will be tempted to forgo 
marriage and niotherhood for the .sake of winning them? Woe betide 
the land which thus offers its political trusts as premiums for childless 
women ? The morals of society are corrupt uow. What do you .suppo.se 
they will become when not to be married, not to be a mother, is the 
prerequisite for a woman’s .success iii a chosen aud tempting career ? 
History gives abundant evidence that women are not naturally of purer 
in.stincts or more capable of self-control than men. It is only as they 
are subject to men as in heathen countries, or yield them.selves to the 
elevating and purifying influences of Chri.stian teaching concerning 
marriage and the home, that they rise to a higher moral level. Emanci¬ 
pated from these restraints, the intensity of their nature often betrays 
them into surpa.ssing depths of depravity. I .speak advisedly, therefore, 
and in the light of thirty years’ profound and prayerful study of social 
problems, when I say that the direct tendency of woman suffrage would 
be to form a class of women such as held high court in Greece in the 
days preceding its downfall : women brilliant and intellectual, but 
wholly wanting in that steadfast faith and abiding virtue which character¬ 
ize the Anglo-vSaxon ideal of womanhood, I may say the Christian idea^ 
as well.—The wife and mother. Are American men prepared to relegate 
the wives and mothers of this republic to a secondary and subservient 


place, and share the political leadership of this j^reat and free country 
with an oligarchy of Aspasias ? 

You say that the passage of the ])roposed resolution would not coniinit 
any person to the support of woman suffrage in the end. But what 
does it do if passed by both houses? It sends the discussion of this 
question, backed by the authorit}- of Congress, into every State of this 
Union. A score or two of the professional advocates of woman suffrage 
will beat up the entire territory, and, b}' their noisy persistence, will 
necessitate either that women shall 'take the field upon the other side, or 
else let the question go b}' default. Home-loving women —the women 
who stay in their homes and fulfil the duties of their vocation, and 
these women are in the great majority in all our vStates and terri¬ 
tories—have little taste for public strife, and few gifts with which to win 
battles in the public arena. Still, if needs must, they can and will 
defend their homes ; but, believe me, they will not exonerate from blame 
those legislators who, by the advocacy of measures like this which 3^)11 
propose, have thrust the hard necessity upon them. 

Do you ask me, then, what shall men do, in regard to this cry, which 
is coming up all over the land, for purer politics, a worth}’ conduct of 
affairs? Men know ver\^ well what the\’ ought to do about it. They 
ought to live daily and hourl}’ in the fear of God and for the honor of 
good women. They ought steadfastly to practice those principles of 
purity, honor, uprightness, and patriotism, which it is the dutv of every 
Christian home to inculcate. It is verv true that the duty is now too 
often imperfect!}’ performed in our homes ; but, believe me, the remedy 
for this evil does not lie in the direction of woman suffrage. It is by 
inciting and helping woman to the more faithful di.scharge of her own 
duties that legislators will honor her far more than by dragging her out 
of the quiet of her own domain, and setting her to perform their neg¬ 
lected and unfulfilled ta.sks. 

Instead of fifteen millions of women voters vainly trying to do the 
work which God demands of men, there should be fifteen million of 
happy homes in this broad, fair land; homes supported by the father’s 
labor, made to glow with heaven’s own light by the mother’s tender 
love and care; homes where children are being reared who shall become 
ju.st and upright men, and faithful, conscientious women; where those 
virtues are being taught which are the only enduring bulwarks of a 
free, republican government. It is to build up such home.s, not to 
break down their walls, and quench the light upon their hearthstones, 
that legislation ought to be directed. 

There are other and weightier arguments against woman suffrage, 
but the.se are such as are suggested by the text of your Report. I com¬ 
mend them to your earnest con.sideration before you again address the 
United vStates .Senate as the Champion of Woman. 

Very respectfully yours, 

THE AUTHOR OF LETTERS FROM A CHIMNEY CORNER. 

Papers and pamphlets can be obtained and protest signed at Head¬ 
quarters of Anti-Suffrage, at 70 North Pearl Street, ground floor, under 
Kenmore Hotel, Albany. 


From N. Y. MAIL AND EXPRESS. 

May 12th, 1897. 


The progress that woman’s suffrage has made in New Zealand 
is causing considerable agitating talk in England, especially in view 
of the fact that the women are voting against the extreme temper¬ 
ance party. In 1893 1 ^^^ New Zealand parliament established full 
female suffrage, equivalent to that of the mfen, and it also passed a 
law giving absolute right of local control, even to the extent of the 
entire prohibition of the liquor traffic. 

The first Parliament and the first local control elections in 1894 
were in accordance with the expectations of the reformers, for the 
women electors came strongly to the poll. They were almost 
universally in favor of the limitation of the liquor licenses. They 
supported the advanced radical candidates. The social question 
came to the front, and men of dubious morality stood little chance in 
that election. The progressive party and its friends congratulated 
themselves on the fact that the accession of women to politics was a 
great gain for the xlemocrats and social reform. But on the second 
election which has recently taken place, all these calculations were 
disturbed. Previous to the election extensive canvassing was done 
by the publicans and prohibitionists. Organizations were formed in 
all directions; every elector, male and female, was canvassed. 
Teniperance literature was scattered broadcast. The liquor sellers 
formed what they called Liberty Leagues all over the isUnd and 
boomed their side. Three distinct issues were presented to the 
electors: one that the liquor traffic should continue as it is at present, 
the number of licenses remaining unchanged ; another, that these 
licenses should be greatly reduced, and the third issue was that 
there should be total prohibition of the sale of intoxicants. In no 



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one district was the reduction of licenses carried, or were licenses 
altogether refused. This extraordinary result has only been attained 
by the shifting of a large part of the women’s votes from the temper¬ 
ance to the liquor party, in exact opposition to their votes of three 
years since. 

Sir Robert Stout, writing in the Australian “Review of Reviews’ ’ 
says: “It cannot be said that purity of administration or the 
character of the candidates loomed larger in the eyes of women tha n 
in those of men. The prediction that party zeal and partisan feel¬ 
ing would not blind them to the defects of the character of candidates 
has not been fulfilled. A few members have been returned to the 
House whOvSe character for sobriety does not stand high, and women 
were found supporting them just as much as men. It cannot be said 
that women were anywise different in their voting from their 
husbands and brothers. They were carried away just as much by 
party cries as the men were, and party dominated them. That the 
influence of women in politics and their voting will not be different 
from that of their husbands and brothers may be regarded as a fore¬ 
gone conclusion.’’ 

For more leaflets, send to 13 Elk Street, Albany, N. Y. 


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Precedents and the Women of Utah. 


To the Editor of the Argus : 

Sir :—In your edition of November 4, you say, editorially, that 
“there will be no little interest in the official returns from Utah, 
especially to the advocates of woman suffrage. It is asserted that the 
number of women registered in Utah exceeded the number of men 
who voted last 3'ear. If the percentage of women voting is equally 
large, it will, certainly, combat, to a considerable extent, the ancient 
contention that women would not vote if they could, since they do 
not where and when they can.” 

B3" this date the result of the vote in Utah is known to you. 
But, possibly, in some of its minute details, to not all of your readers. 
The women did vote and carried the State by an overwhelming 
majority for Bryan. This is hardly compatible with the sense of the 
woman suffrage sentiment, as expressed in the Republican platform. 
It is probably known to most of your readers that a Utah woman, 
Mrs. Mattie Hughes Cannon, has been elected to the State Senate. 
What is not known, perhaps, is that she ran against her one-fourth 
interest in her husband ; and, as the dispatches put it, “licked him 
out of his boots. “ It is whispered that the other three wives of Mr. 
Angus M. Cannon—the husband of Mrs. Mattie Hughes Cannon, as 
well as of the other three women—voted against Mrs. Mattie, and in 
favor of their mutual husband. 

There can be no such an emergency arising in this Mormon 
family as might arise in the East, did a wife defeat her husband for 
the senatorship. Here a question regarding the household arrange¬ 
ments might obtain ; there the other three wives can settle that 
question, and leave Mr. Angus to shine in the reflected light of his 
better one-fourth. 

-What I object to in 3'our editorial, Mr. Editor, is the inference 
that Utah women could in any way establish a precedent for Eastern 
women. Questions of right and wrong have different values in Utah 
and in New York. What Utah women do cannot in any way be 
taken as an indication of what New York women would do. 

Regarding the statement that women will not vote when per¬ 
mitted to do so, let me call your attention to school suffrage statistics. 

The great cry of the suffragists has been that the women should, 





at least, have a voice in the selection of those in control of the edu¬ 
cation of their children, inferentially asserting that men are indiffer¬ 
ent as to their children’s interests and welfare. This idea has pre¬ 
vailed until in twenty-two States and in two territories women may 
vote in the selection of school officers. The anti-suffragists have 
not opposed this, although, personally, I do not approve of it, for 
obvious reasons : 

In Connecticut only two and one-half per cent, of the women 
voted. In Massachusetts the vote dwindled down from a registration 
of 20,252 in 1888, when a warfare of religious sects was made, to 
3,000 in 1891, and only two-thirds of that number voted. In 
Chicago, two years ago, the registration of women was, in round 
numbers, 30,000, and about 24,000 voted. This year the registration 
dropped to 6,264 • 

Before men force a duty upon women, they .should see to it that 
they keep themselves in line. A full male vote is an unprecedented 
fact. Who are the men who do not exercise this wonderful ‘ ‘right ?’ ’ 
Are they the ignorant ? The purchasable ? The fanatics ? 

If there is nothing to be gained by women from the ballot—and 
of that there is no doubt in any well-balanced mind—what is the 
country to gain that will balance the disadvantages and burdens, its 
imposition would imply ? Either every woman of intelligence and 
probity would have to vote in rain or shine, sick or well, in order to 
counteract the vote of the other women, or the country would more 
than lose by their suffrage. 

Eet us retain our confidence in the men who make our laws, Mr. 
Editor, and who vote not only for their own interests but for ours, as 
they are identical. We do not believe men are so black as they are 
painted when it is asserted that women must vote in order to protect 
themselves and purify the ballot. 

MRS. W. WINSEOW CRANNELL. 
A1.BANY, N. Y., Nov. yth, i 8 (j 6 . 






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Prohibition and Woman Suffrage. 


The professional workers for woman suffrage are trying 
to induce women to join their ranks by the statement that 
women would work for prohibitory liquor laws if they 
had the ballot. Let us look at Colorado statistics : In 
1892 out of a presidential vote of 93,843 the men cast 
1,683 votes for the Prohibition Candidate. The next year 
suffrage was given to the women of that state. In 1896 
out of 189,141 votes cast for President, only 1,717 were 
cast for the Prohibition candidate. So that, although the 
presidential vote was more than doubled, only 79 more 
votes were cast for Prohibition, when both men and women 
voted than were cast by the men only in 1892. It will 
be well for women to remember this. 

MRS. W. WINSLOW CRANNELL. 


Albany, N. Y., March t 6, iSpy. 





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WAS UNJUSTLY QUOTED. 


President Eeiot of Harvard University 
Writes a Letter. 


Paragraphs Twisted. 


Coeeege Presidnet Claims that Woman Suffragists Mis¬ 
represented His Real Opinion in the Call Issued 
FOR THE Twenty-Eighth Annual Conven¬ 
tion OF THE Suffragists. 


President Charles W. Eliot, of Harvard University, has addressed 
a letter to Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyii of Albany, in which he severely 
criticises the call issued for the twenty-eighth annual convention of 
the National American Association of Women Suffragists, which is 
to be held in Washington, January 23 to 28. 






The part of the call objected to and President Eliot’s references 
thereto, will be read with interest by those people all over the country 
who are either for or against woman suffrage. 

They are contained in the following, which was furnished The 
Argus press last night, by Bishop Doane ; 

THE CALL. 

Extract from the call of the twenty-eighth annual convention of 
the National American Association of Women Suffragists : 

“All friends of justice and equal rights are earnestly invited to 
assemble in the twenty-eighth annual convention of the American 
Woman’s Suffrage association, in the Church of Our Father, Wash¬ 
ington, January 23 to 28. 

“The present day is bristling with an energy which has for its 
aim the elevation of our race in mental and moral directions, in every 
department, indeed, of human life. Living under the law, helped 
and hindered by its enactments, women are, by every principle of 
natural justice, as well as by the nature of our institutions, as fully 
entitled as men to vote and to be eligible to office. 

‘ ‘As the president of Harvard university says : ‘The exercise of 
suffrage stimulates all citizens to reflect on problems outside the 
narrow circle of their private interests and occupations. The duties 
of Republican citizenship, rightly discharged, constitute in themselves 
a prolonged education. The bulwarks of the commonwealth will 
prove all the stronger and more lasting because women, as well as 
men, can work on them and help to transmit them, ever broader and 
firmer, from generation to generation.’ ’’ 

(Signed,) SUSAN B. ANTHONY, 

President. 

RACHEL FOSTER AVERY, 

Corresponding Secretary. 


MR. ELIOT’S DENIAL. 

Extract from a letter of the president of Harvard university : 

Harvard University, 

Cambridge, Jan. 6, 1896. 

The quotation in the call for the twenty-eighth annual conven¬ 
tion of the National American Woman’s Suffrage association, 
introduced by the clause, “As the president of Harvard university 
says,’’ is from an article by me in the Forum of October, 1894, 
entitled ‘ ‘Some Reasons Why the American Republic May Endure. ’ ’ 

The last paragraph in the quotation is separated in the article 
by ten pages from the preceding paragraphs of the quotation. In 
the last quoted paragraph “the bulwarks” should be “these bul¬ 
warks.’’ “These bulwarks” had just been enumerated in the last 
paragraph of my article, and the suffrage, whether for men, for 
women or for both, was not mentioned among these bulwarks. 

The list is long and specific, and does not contain the suffrage. 
The manner in which the quotation is printed in the call, the alter¬ 
ation of “these” to “the,” and the misrepresentation of my real 
opinion make the extracts in the call a perfect example of misleading 
and unjust quotation. 

Your are at liberty to make any use of this article which may 
seem to you desirable. 

Very truly yours, 

CHARLES W. ELIOT. 

Bishop Doane is strongly opposed to woman suffrage, and is 
one of its many opponents in this section of the country. 


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Report of Third Judicial District of New York 
State Association Opposed to the lixTENSioN 
OF Suffrage to Women, from May ist, 

1896, TO May I St, 1897. 


In May, 1896, an organization was formed at Hudson, Mrs. J. 
R. Cady as Chairman. Also in Cohoes, Mrs. David Johnston as 
Chairman. 

In June, 1896, Mrs. Crannell represented the cause at the 
Republican National Convention at St. Louis, with most satisfactory 
results. We wrote in regard to this proposed action to New York, 
Brooklyn and Boston. All thought well of the undertaking, but 
had no suitable person to go. 

In July, 1896, Mrs. Crannell went to National Democratic Con¬ 
vention in Chicago, with most satisfactory results. 

New York, Brooklyn and Boston insisted in paying a share of 
expenses incurred by these journeys. 

Too much praise cannot be bestowed upon Mrs. Crannell for her 
interest, ability, tact and pluck in these undertakings. Her two 
able addresses are printed as leaflets and have been sent broadcast 
through the States, and have been written for by a large number of 
people. We are also very grateful to members of both conventions 
for courtesy and efficient help. 

Mrs. Johnston of Cohoes sent out in May, 1896, fifteen hundred 
and forty-seven (1547) return postal cards, to operatives in mills of 
that town. 

Through kindness of Mrs. Woolworth, of Castleton, return 
postals were sent to operatives in mills of that town. 

.J)irectly November election excitement subsided, we prepared 
and circulated through 3d Judicial District, which embraces seven 
counties, newspaper plates,—three plates sent to every small news¬ 
paper—where several were in a town, selecting one Republican and 
one Democratic. This plan was sure to reach people to whom it was 
impossible to send leaflets. It went to the newspapers free of all 
expense, even expressage paid. 



In Der'ember, 1896, wrote 150 letters and enclosed leaflets to 
New York State Assemblymen elected in November. 

Sent return postal cards to Normal School graduates, in 32 
counties, also to^Female Academy graduates, also to one hundred 
religious newspapers of 3d Judicial District. 

The spring and autumn general meetings have been held at 13 
Elk Street, and Executive Committee has met whenever called by 
chairman. 

During the year some very able papers have been written for 
leaflets, and we are indebted to Mrs. Wallace, wife of U. S. Judge 
Wallace^ to Mrs. Stillman, to Mrs. Crannell, for their untiring 
interest in the cause. Some bright newspaper articles we also thank 
Mrs. Crannell for. We are also indebted to various editors for 
courtesy both in and out of 3rd Judicial District. 

In March, 1897, ^ delegation of New York, Brooklyn and 
Albany women appeared before Judiciary Committee of Senate 
at Albany. Two weeks later the}^ were ready to appear before 
Judiciary Committee of Assembly. No hearing took place. The 
matter was killed in Committee too late to notify the ladies not 
to come. 

In the way of outside work, we have tried to send letters and 
leaflets wherever we read the suffragists were at work. We think 
the seed sown has borne decided fruit, judging by two defeats in 
California ; three .separate bills defeated in Massachu.setts ; in terri¬ 
tories of Arizona and Oklahoma ; in states of Vermont ; Nebraska ; 
Nevada; Montana; Maine; Delaware in Constitutional Convention; 
Kansas ; New York ; Missouri , Connecticut ; in Indiana by Judicial 
decision ; in Illinois, where it failed to be the one Constitutional 
Amendment possible to be adopted ; in Halifax, N. , S. ; then the 
farce in the British House of Commons in February ; later on in 
the House of Lords, who refu.sed to notice the suggestion ; and now 
in Australia. 

In 1896, we wrote letters and enclosed leaflets to the press in 
various States above referred to. 

Press of California, - - - . 100 letters with leaflets. 

Clergy “ ----- 150 “ 


Citizens “ - - 

Press of Maine, 

Citizens of Maine and Jud. Com. 


95 

84 


74 


Press of Iowa, - - . . 

Members of both houses, 

Padies, - . _ . 

io8 letters 
- 142 “ 

TOO “ 

Oregon Press, - - - . 

“ Senate, 

“ Assembly, 

62 “ 

50 “ 

- 58 “ 

Delaware Press, 

Members Constitutional Convention, 

23 “ 

- 30 “ 

Montana Press, 

Members of Senate, 

Members of House, 

36 “ 

- 23 “ 

69 “ 

Press of Nevada, 

Members of Senate, 

Members of House, 

16 “ 

- 15 “ 

30 “ 

Press of Nebraska, 

Members of Senate, 

Members of Assembly, 

160 

- 33 “ 

100 “ 

Press of Missouri, 

- 232 “ 

Press of Oklahoma, 

25 “ 

Press of Washington, 

- 70 “ 

Illinois Press, 

Members both Houses, 

378 “ 

- 204 “ 

Press of West Virginia, 

Members both Houses, 

50 “ 

123 “ 

Press of North Carolina, 

Members both Houses, 

50 “ 

169 “ 

Louisiana Press, 

Members both Houses, - 

51 “ 

93 " 

South Carolina Press, 

69 “ 

South Dakota Press, 

Members both Houses, 

- 76 “ 

127 “ 


Other letters to people, 


250 letters with leaflets. 


Letters to Canada, Australia, London 

and Scotland, - - 50 “ 

Women’s Bibles sent, - - 200 copies. 

f 4000 Letters. 

^ ^ 15000 Leaflets. 

1896. ^ 

I 200 Woman’s Bibles, 

I 2000 Return Postals. 

All of which is respectfully submitted. 

ANNA PARKER PRUYN, 


President 3d Judicial District. 


A. 0. S. W. 

REPORT OF THIRD JUDICIAL DISTRICT. 


FROM 

Aprif 1ST, 1897, 
TO 

ApRIF 1ST, 1898. 


In October, 1897, ^ general meeting was held at 13 Klk Street, 
Albany, and in winter of 1898, a general one at Hall of Female 
Academy. Several meetings of Executive Committee have been 
held as needed during the year. 

The usual interest has been felt in the District, and funds raised. 

In the way of work outside of Judicial District much has been 
accomplished. Wherever the Suffragists have been at work, there 
we have quietly sowed the good seed. 

Letters- and numerous leaflets have been sent to 


Legi.slature of Illinois, 


250 letters. 



West Virgina, 
North Carolina, 
South Carolina, 
Tennessee, 


97 

167 

165 

132 

219 

95 


Georgia, 


North Dakota, 
Maryland, 


112 


Washington State, 112 


Iowa, 

Ohio, 


146 


150 


Constitutional Convention Louisiana, twice. 
Legislative Body of British Columbia, 

Letters to ladies of Geneva, N. Y., 

Editors of Georgia, 

Editors of various newspapers in above states. 
Letters to individuals. 

Letters to members of Suffrage Committees 


272 

33 

43 

172 

500 

500 


of Congress in Feb. 1898. 







Many clever articles have been circulated in the Press written 
by ladies of the Third Judicial District, and very many leaflets, which 
are in great demand. 

To this statement may be added the fact that the Assembly 
Judiciary of the State of New York on Feb. 2, 1898, killed in com¬ 
mittee the concurrent resolution to amend the Constitution by pro¬ 
viding for woman suffrage. On March 3, the Suffragists forced a 
hearing before the Judiciary Committee, who again voted, 10-3, to 
not report favorably. 

All of which is respectfully submitted. 

ANNA PARKER PRUYN, 

President 3rd Judicial District. 



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13 ELK street, ALBANY, N. Y. 

REPORT OF 3rd JUDICIAL DISTRICT 

FROM APRIL 1898 TO APRIL 1899. 

The usual semi-yearly meetings held and Executive Com¬ 
mittee called whenever necessary. Much interest is felt in 
District at numerous defeats of suffrage throughout the country 
as well as in New York State. The suffragists did not bring 
in this 3^ear the usual “concurrent resolutions” for a “Constitu¬ 
tional Amendment ” but several small bills were introduced in 
both Houses in relation to taxes, compulsory appointments on 
school boards, etc., etc. 

Delegates from New York, Brooklyn and Albany appeared 
before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate on the 22d of 
February in regard to Taxation Bill and able papers were pre¬ 
sented. Since then the other bills have been defeated in 
Committees chiefly. 

In regard to work outside our district, much has been 
accomplished in the cause by Massachusetts and New York 
State organizations granting request of various men and women 
in South Dakota and State of Washington that Mrs. Crannell 
should visit those vStates and assist in organization, etc. Three 
months she spent in this successful undertaking, and all good 
citizens must be very thankful to her for the tact and wisdom 
she displayed. 

The 3d Judicial District has been doing missionary work 
during sessions of Legislatures in States where the agitators 
were working this winter. Several thousand letters have been 
sent to Legislators, the Press, Clergy of various religious 
bodies, and at least twenty thousand leaflets have been scattered 
in Territories of Oklahoma and Arizona, States of Indiana, 
Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Georgia, Oregon, Washington 
and South Dakota, etc., etc., and results have been most satis¬ 
factory. 

All of which is respectfully submitted. 

ANNA PARKER PRUYN, 

President Third Judicial District. 



SHALL WOMEN BE BURDENED WITH 
THE BALLOT? 

BY REV. THEODORE E. CUYEER. 

Meeting a group of half dozen highly intelligent 
women. I frankly propounded to them the question, 
“Do you sincerely desire to be invested with the bur* 
dens and grave responsibilities of the ballot and of 
civil office ?’ ’ One of the number replied in the affirm¬ 
ative ; the others with a decided ‘ 'No. ’ ‘ I suspect 
that those ladies fairly represented the opinions of thoughtful 
women in this commonwealth, where the very old question of 
female suffrage is under new and vehement agitation. So.iie 
of the reasons that influence solid and sensible women for 
refusing the burden of political duties are the following : 

(i) This is not a question of woman’s capacity in the 
domain of art, literature, science, etc., but of her duties in the 
domain of civil government. The Creator made man and 
woman to govern, but in totally different spheres and methods. 
To man He has entrusted civil headship, the admini.stration 
of justice, the authority of magistracy with the siroug-arm 
power to enforce obedience to authority when required. The 
burden of ballot and of baton is laid upon him. Woman has 
her equally important (perhaps more important) empire in 
which she is to rule—by persuasion, by captivities of love, by 
force of character, by a power as gentle as the beneficence of 
the sunbeam. She has quite enough on her hands now in 
educating herself and the young immortals committed to her 
care, in governing home and household, in exercising the 
gentle but mighty influence without which man would soon 
degenerate into domestic and social barbarism. Woe be to 
us men when our mothers, wives, and sisters weary of thei: 
beautiful sceptre and snatch after the ballot, the jury-man’s 
seat, and the police baton of civil authority ! 


(2) When civil power ha.s been entrusted to woman, 
she has not (with very tew exceptions) been succevssful. For 
example, in England we find a mischievous Queen Margaret, 
a bloody Mary, a dull Queen Anne, and several other 
mediocrities ; and even the splendid archievements of Queen 
Elizabeth’s reign were largely due to the great men around 
her, and in spite of her arrogance, vanity, and fiequent 
duplicity. Motley, Campbell, and other impartial historians 
have made sad havoc with her fame. The present noble and 
pure-minded occupant of the British throne reigns, but not 
governs. Parliament and Premier rule the empire. 

(3) It is claimed that women needs the ballot for self¬ 
protection. But every intelligent person knows how readily 
of late years legislation has been granting to women relief 
from former disabilities and injustice in the matter of property, 
and of her marital rights. What gallantry and justice to her 
sex have done, will continue to be done. Her strength is in 
remaining a woman and not striving to be a man. Homage 
to womankind is one of the best traits of American character. 
The grasp at the suffrage might destroy more than it could 
replace. 

(4) There is something quite plausible in the assertion 
that as woman does so much to purify literature and society 
she might also, by accepting the burdens of the ballot and 
office-holding (for the two are inseparable') do much to purify 
our unclean politics. But by the time they are through with 
the dirty job of “purifying” the primaries, the caucus, and 
the conventions, who shall purify the women ? It might save 
some labor if the dresses of ladies were made long enough to 
sweep floors and sidewalks, but what about the dresses ? I 
feel quite sure that womanhood would suffer more than 
political morality would gain. 

Then, too, all womanhood is not angelic. The mul¬ 
titude of ignorant women and of depraved w^omen would 
assuredly be brought to the polls by machine, politicians 
and demagogues; while the cultured, the quiet, and the 
Christian class would be reluctant to enter the political arena 
to out-vote the ignorant and corrupt. And so a new burthen 


of responsibilit}^ would be thrust upon respectable woman¬ 
hood. Some of my Prohibitionist brethren insist that female 
suffrage would shut up the saloons in Brooklyn and New 
York and other great cities. They forget what an army of 
beer-drinking women would swarm out of the slums and the 
tenement houses to reinforce the army of beer-drinking and 
whisky drinking men in favor of the dram-shop. We suffer 
enough now from the foreign male vote in our cities ; what 
would it be if the foreign female vote were added likewise ? 

(5) There is one argument against imposing the 
burden of civil duties upon woman that delicacy allows us to 
hint at. It is that the Creator has put an interdict on the 
participation of a large number of our sister-sex in public affairs 
through certain physical disabilities which belong to wifehood 
and maternity. And let me also remind the zealous female 
suffragist that if perilous passions were to be introduced as an 
element into politics, it would furnish a new source of 
corruption and profligacy. 

(6) If the ballot is to be imposed upon our mothers 
and daughters, then with it come office-holding, jury-duty 
and other political responsibilities. Then will come the 
necessity for them to study tariffs, currency problems, and all 
other civil questions in order to vote intelligently at the polls 
or in the legislative hall. Then will come sharp controversies 
between husbands and wives that will not minister to 
connubial peace. Then will come conflicts between the great 
sacred duties, which God has laid upon woman and the other 
duties which a false and foolish theory of government has 
piled upon her overloaded shoulders. For one, I love and 
honor the sex that gave me the best of mothers and the 
best of wives too well to be an accomplice in any such 
outrage. 

V. (7) But, says the vehement female suffragists, “we 
claim the ballot and political office as a nahiral rightf 
Madam, you are sadly mistaken. If voting were a natural 
right, then every young man might exercise it before he 
reached the age of twenty-one, and every foreigner as soon as 


he landed on our shores. The ballot is a privilege delegated 
by the Constitution to certain persons under certain conditions. 
It is also a tremendous trust. It is a solemn and exacting 
trust. It involves a heavy burden ot responsibility, Office¬ 
holding also becomes more vexatious and oppressive every 
year. Your Creator has laid heavy loads on woman’s head 
and hand and heart; aud the wisest of your sex are seeking 
more of divine grace to bear them. Beware how you rashly 
clamor for new burdens which would be ‘ ‘light’ ’ only to those 
who are too weak to understand them, or too wicked to 
respect their sacred responsibility ! 

(8) A recent correspondent who is opposed to female 
suffrage declares that he is ‘ ‘willing to see the experiment 
tried. ” If it fails, what then ? He must remember that a 
suffrage once enlarged ca 7 i never be contracted. We Republi¬ 
cans gave universal suffrage to the southern Freedmen, 
instead of requiring an educational qualification. It is too late 
to shut the door now. As long as the great majority of 
thoughtful and conscientious women do not desire to be voters, 
jurymen, or office-holders, why force the burdens upon them? 

Let the high endeavor of every good woman be to do 
her full duty to God, to society, to her family and to the 
commonwealth, in the great sphere in which God has placed 
her. Woman must do her work for her country as woman 
and not as a counterfeit man. We do not need her at the 
polls, but those who do go to the polls need a good mother's 
training and good home influence. This whole suffrage 
movement is what Dr. Horace Bushnell called “a reform 
agahist nature."' There is full scope for a true woman’s 
patience, power, purity, and prayers without attempting to 
override that divine arrangement which never fitted her to be 
a soldier, a sailor, a civil engineer, a juryman, a magistrate, 
a policeman, a politician. 

May, 1894, Published by the “Protest Committee.” 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 
13 Elk Street, Albany. 


SOME OF THE REASONS 


AQAINSX 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


BY 


FRANCIS PARKMAN, 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

The Power of Sex.3 

Self-Complacency of the Agitators.4 

Cruelty of Women Suffrage.4 

Power should go with Responsibility.5 

Alternatives of Women Suffrage.5 

Political Dangers of Women Suffrage.5 

The Female Politician.6 

Men will give Women Suffrage if they want it.7 

Most Women Averse to it.8 

Woman Suffragists have done nothing to prove their fitness 

for a share in Government.8 

Permanence ol the Relations of the Sexes.8 

Is Woman Suffrage a Right or a Wrong ?.9 

Woman Suffrage not Progress. n 

Woman in Politics an Antiquated Idea. n 

The Connection between Voting and Fighting.12 

The Voting of a large Non-Combatant Class dangerous to 

Civil Harmony .. 

Another Source of Discord.. 

Practical versus Sentimental Government.14 

Shall we stand by American Principles?. .. . is 






















SOME OF THE REASONS AGAINST WOMAN 
SUFFRAGE. 


THE POWER OF SEX. 

It has been said that the question of the rights and employment 
of women should be treated without regard to sex. It should rather 
be said that those who consider it regardless of sex do not consider 
it at all. It will not do to exclude from the problem the chief factor 
in it, and deal with women only as if they were smaller and weaker 
men. Yet these have been the tactics of the agitators for female 
suffrage, and to them they mainly owe what success they have had. 
Hence their extreme sensitiveness whenever the subject is approached 
on its most essential side. If it could be treated like other subjects, 
and discussed fully and freely, the cause of the self-styled reformers 
would have been hopeless from the first. It is happy for them that 
the relations of women to society cannot be so discussed without 
giving just offense. Their most important considerations can be 
touched but slightly ; and even then offense will be taken. 

Whatever liberty the best civilization may accord to women, 
they must always be subject to restrictions unknown to the other 
sex, and they can never dispense with the protecting influences which 
society shows about them. A man, in lonely places, has nothing to 
lose but life and property ; and he has nerve and muscles to defend 
them. He is free to go whither he pleases, and run what risks he 
pleases. Without a radical change in human nature, of which the 
world has never given the faintest sign, women cannot be equally 
emancipated. It is not a question of custom, habit, or public 
opinion ; but of an all-prevading force, always formidable in the vast 
number of men in whom it is not controlled by higher forces. A 
woman is subject, also, to many other restrictions, more or less 
stringent, necessary to the maintenance of self-respect and the respect 
of others, and yet placing her at a disadvantage, as compared to men, 
in the active work of the world. All this is mere truism, but the 



plainest truism may be ignored in the interest of a theory or a 
‘ ‘cause. ’ ’ 

Again, everybody knows that the physical and mental constitu¬ 
tion of woman is more delicate than in the other sex ; and we may 
add, the relations between mind and body are more intimate and 
and subtile. It is true that they are abundantly so in men ; but 
their harder organism is neither so sensitive to disturbing influences 
nor subject to so many of them. 

It is these and other inherent conditions, joined to the engrossing 
nature of a woman’s special functions, that have determined through 
all time her relative position. What we have just said—and we 
might have said much more—is meant as a reminder that her greatest 
limitations are not of human origin. Men did not make them, and 
they cannot unmake them. Through them, God and Nature have 
ordained that those subjects to them shall not be forced to join in the 
harsh conflicts of the world militant. It is folly to ignore them, or 
try to counteract them by political and social quackery. They set at 
naught legislatures and peoples. 

SHLF-COMPTACENCY OF THE AGITATORS. 

Here we may notice an idea which seems to prevail among the 
women suffragists, that they have argued away the causes which 
have always determined the substantial relations of the sexes. This 
notion arises mainly from the fact that they have had the debate very 
much to themselves. Their case is that of the self made philosopher 
who attacked the theory of gravitation, and, because nobody took 
the trouble to answer him, boasted that he had demolished it, and 
called it an error of the past. 

CRUEETY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 

The frequent low state of health among American women is a 
fact as undeniable as it is deplorable. 

In this condition of things, what do certain women demand for 
the good of their sex ? To add to the excitements that are wasting 
them other and greater excitements, and to cares too much for their 
strength other and greater cares. Because the}^ cannot do their own 
work, to require them to add to it the work of men, and launch them 


4 


into the turmoil where the most robust sometimes fail. It is much 
as if a man in a state of nervous exhaustion were told by his physi¬ 
cian to enter at once for a foot-race or a boxing-match. 

POWER SHOULD GO WITH RESPONSIBILITY. 

To hold the man responsible and yet deprive him of power is 
neither just or rational. The man is the natural head of the family, 
and is responsible for its maintenance and order. Plence he ought 
to control the social and business agencies which are essential to the 
successful discharge of the trust imposed upon him. If he is 
deprived of any part of this control, he should be freed also in the 
same measure from the responsibilities attached to it. 

ALTERNATIVES OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 

Woman suffrage must have one of two effects. If, as many of 
its advocates complain, women are subservient to men, and do noth¬ 
ing but what they desire, then woman suffrage will have no other 
result than to increase the power of the other sex ; if, on the other 
hand, women vote as they see fit, without regarding their husbands, 
then unhappy marriages will be multiplied and divorces redoubled. 
We cannot afford to add to the elements of domestic unhappiness. 

political dangers of woman suffrage. 

One of the chief dangers of popular government is that of incon¬ 
siderate and rash legislation. In impatience to be rid of one evil, 
ulterior consequences are apt to be forgotten. In the haste to 
redress one wrong, a door may be opened to many. This danger 
would be increased immeasurably if the most impulsive and excit¬ 
able half of humanity had an equal voice in the making of laws, and 
in the administration of them. Abstract right would then be made 
to prevail after a fashion somewhat startling. A lady of intelligence 
and admirable intentions, an ardent partisan on principles of pure 
humanitarianism, confessed that, in the last presidential election, 
Florida, had given a majority for the Democrats; but insisted that 


5 


is was right to count it for Hayes, because other states had been 
counted wrongfully for Tilden. It was impossible to make her com¬ 
prehend that government conducted on such principles would end in 
anarchy. In politics,the virtues of women would sometimes be as 
dangerous as their faults. 

If the better class of women flatter themselves that they can 
control the others, they are doomed to disappointment. They will 
be outvoted in their own kitchens, without reckoning the agglomer¬ 
ations of poverty, ignorance, and vice, that form a startling propor¬ 
tion of our city populations. It is here that the male vote alone 
threatens our system with its darkest perils. The female vote 
would enormously increase the evil, for it is often more numerous, 
always more impulsive and less subject to reason, and almost devoid 
of the sen.se of responsibility. Here the bad politician would find 
his richest resources. He could not reach the better class of female 
voters, but the rest would be ready to his hand. Three fourths of 
them, when not urged by some pressing need or contagious pa.ssion, 
would be moved, not by principles, but by personal predilections. 

THE fkmaee politician. 

It is not woman’s virtues that would be prominent or influential 
in the political arena. They would shun it by an invincible repul¬ 
sion ; and the opposite qualities would be drawn into it. The Wash¬ 
ington lobby has given us some means of judging what we may 
expect from the woman “inside politics.’’ If politics are to be 
purified by artfulness, effrontery, insensibility, a pushing self-asser¬ 
tion, and a glib tongue, then we may look for regeneration ; for the 
typical female politician will be richly endowed with all these gifts. 

Thus accoutred for the (Conflict, she may fairly hope to have the 
better of her masculine antagonist. A woman has the inalienable 
right of attacking without being attacked in turn. She may strike 
but must not be struck, either literally or figuratively. Most 
woman refrain from abusing their privilege of non-combatants ; but 
there are those in whom the sense of impunity breeds the cowardly 
courage of the virago. 

In reckoning the resources of the female politicians, there is one 
which can by no means be left out. None know better than 

6 


woman 


the potency of feminine charms aided by feminine arts. The women 


“inside politics” will not fail to make use of an influence so subtile 


and strong, and of which the management is peculiarly suited to her 
talents. If—and the contingency is in the highest degree probable— 
she is not gifted with charms of her own, she will have no difficulty 
in finding and using others of her sex who are. If report is to be 
trusted, Delilah has already spread her snares for the congressional 
Samson ; and the power before which the wise fail and the mighty 
fall has been invoked against the sages and heroes of the Capitol. 
When “woman” is fairly “inside politics,” the sensational press will 
reap a harvest of scandals more lucrative to itself than profitable to 
public morals. And, as the zeal of one class of female reformers has 
been, and no doubt will be, largely directed to their grievances in 
matters of sex, we^hall have shrill-tongued discussions of subjects 
which had far better be let alone. 

It may be said that the advocates of female suffrage do not look 
lo political women for the purifying of politics, but to the votes of 
the sex at large. The two, however, cannot be separated. It 
should be remembered that the question is not of a limited and 
select female suffrage, but of a universal one. To limit would be 
impossible. It would seek the broadest areas and the lowest depths, 
and spread itself through the marshes and malarious pools of society. 



Men wiel give Women the Suffrage if they want it 

Again, one of the chief arguments of the agitators is that 
government without the consent of the governed is opposed to 
inalienable right. But most women, including tho.se of the best 
capacity and worth, fully consent that their fathers, hu.sbands, 
brothers, or friends, shall be their political repre.sentives; and no 
exhortation or teasing has induced them to withhold their consent. 

Nor is this surprising; for a woman is generally repre.sented in 
a far truer and more intimate sen.se by her male relative than is this 
relative by the candidate to whom he gives his vote, commonly 
without knowing him; and often with dissent from many of his views. 

Nothing is more certain than that women will have the suffrage 
if they ever want it; for when they want it, men will give it to them 
regardless of conqiiences. A more than readine.ss on the part of men 


7 


to conform to the wishes of the other sex is a national trait in 
America, though whether it would survive the advent of the female 
politician is matter for reflection. We venture to remind those who 
demand woman suffrage as a right that, even if it were so, the 
great majority of intelligent women could judge for themselves 
whether to exercise it, better than the few who assume to teach them 
their duty. 

MOST WOMEN AVERSE TO IT. 

The agitators know well that, in spite of their persistent 
importunity, the majority of women are averse to the suffrage. 
Hence, the ludicrous terror which the suffragists showed at the 
Governor’s proposal to submit the question to a vote of the women 
of the State. 

THE WOMAN SUFFRAGISTS HAVE DO^E NOTHING 
TO PROVE THEIR FITNESS FOR A SHARE IN 

GOVERNMENT. 

A small number of women have spent their time for several 
decades in ceaseless demands for suffrage, but they have lost their 
best argument in failing to show that they are prepared to use the 
franchise wdien they have got it. A single sound and useful contri¬ 
bution to one side or the other of any question of current politics— 
the tariff, specie payments, the silver bill, civil-service reform, rail¬ 
road monopoly, capital and labor, or a half score of other matters— 
would have done more for their cause than years of empty agitation. 

PERMANENCE OF THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES. 

The agitators say that no reason can be given why women 
should not take a direct part in politics, except that they have never 
done so. There are other reasons, and strong ones, in abundance. 
But this particular one is nevertheless good. All usages, laws and 
institutions have risen and perished, and risen and perished again. 
Their history is the history of mutability itself. But, from the 
earliest records of mankind down to this moment, in every race and 
every form or degree of civilization or barbarism, the relative position 
of the sexes have been essentially the same, with exceptions so feeble, 


8 


rare, and transient that they only prove the rule. Such permanence 
in the foundation of society, while all that rests upon it has passed 
from change to change, is proof in itself that this foundation lies deep 
in the essential nature of things. It is idle to prate of the old time 
that has passed away and the new time that is coming. The “new 
time’ ’ can no more stir the basis of human nature than it can stop 
the movement of the earth. 

The cause of this permanence is obvious. Women have great 
special tasks assigned them in the work of life, and men have not. 
To these tasks their whole nature, moral and physical, is adjusted. 
There is scarcely a distinctive quality of women that has not a direct 
or indirect bearing upon them. Everything else in their existence 
is subordinate to the indispensable functions of containing and rearing 
the human race ; and, during the best years of life, this work, fully 
discharged, leaves little room for any other. Rightly considered, it 
is a work no less dignified than essential. It is the root and stem of 
national existence, while the occupations of men are but the leaves 
and branches. On women of the intelligent and instructed classes 
depends the future of the nation. If they are sound in body and 
mind, impart this soundness to a numerous offspring, and rear them 
to a sense of responsibility and duty, there are no national evils that 
we cannot overcome. If they fail to do this their part, then the 
ma.sses of the coarse and unintelligent, always of rapid increase, will 
overwhelm us and our institutions. When these indispensable duties 
are fully discharged, then the suffrage agitators may ask with better 
grace, if not with more reason, that they may share the political func¬ 
tions of men. 

IS WOMAN SUFFRAGE A RIGHT OR A WRONG ? 

It has been claimed as a right that woman should vote. It is no 
right, but a wrong, that a small number of women should impo.se on 
all the. rest political duties which there is no call for their assuming, 
which they do not want to assume, and which, if duly discharged, 
would be a cruel and intolerable burden. This pretense of the 
female suffragists was reduced to an absurdity when some of them 
gravely affirmed that, if a single woman wanted to vote, all the others 
ought to be required to do so. 


9 


Government by doctrines of abstract right, of which the French 
Revolution set the example and bore the fruits, involves enormous 
danger and injustice. No political right is absolute and of universal 
application. Each has its conditions, qualifications, and limitations. 
If these are disregarded, one right collides with another, or with 
many others. Even a man’s right to liberty is subject to the con¬ 
dition that he does not use it to infringe the rights of his neighbors. 
It is in the concrete, and not in the abstract, that rights prevail in 
every sound and wholesome society. They are applied where they are 
applicable. A government of glittering generalities quickly destroy 
itself. The object of government is the acGomplishment of a certain 
result, the greatest good of the governed; and the ways of reaching it 
vary in different countries and different social conditions. Neither 
liberty nor the suffrage are the end ; they are nothing but means to 
reach it ; and each should be used to the extent in which it is best 
adapted to its purpose. If the voting of women conduces to the 
greatest good of the community, then they ought to vote, and other¬ 
wise they ought not. The question of female suffrage thus becomes 
a particular question, and not one of declamation. 

What would be the results of the general application of the so- 
called right to vote, a right which, if it exists at all, must be common 
to all mankind? Suppose that the populations of Turkey, the Soudan, 
or Zululand were to attempt to exercise it and govern themselves by 
universal popular suffrage. The consequence would be anarchy, and 
a quick return to despotism as a relief. The same would be the 
case, in less degree, among people more civilized, yet not trained to 
self-government by the habits and experience of generations. In 
fact, there are but a few of the most advanced nations in whom the 
universal exercise of the pretended “inalienable right” to vote would 
not produce political and social convulsions. The truth is thus: If 
the exercise of the suffrage by any individual or body of individuals 
involves detriment to the whole people, then the right to exercise it 
does not exist. 

It is the right and the duty of the people to provide itself with 
good government, and this great practical right and duty is imperative 
and paramount; whatever conflicts with it must give way. The air- 


lO 


blown theory of inalienable right is unworthy the good sense of the 
American people. The most rational even of the suffragists them¬ 
selves have ceased to rely on it. 

WOMAN SUFFRAGE NOT PROGRESS. 

Many women of sense and intelligence are influenced by the fact 
that the woman-suffrage movement boasts itself a movement of pro¬ 
gress, and by a wish to be on the liberal or progressive side. But 
the boast is unfounded. Progress, to be genuine, must be in accord 
with natural law. If it is not, it ends in failure and in retrogression. 
To give women a thorough and wholesome training both of body and 
mind; to prepare such of them as have strength and opportunity for 
various occupations different from what they usually exercise, and 
above all for the practice of medicine, in which we believe that they 
may render valuable service; to rear them in more .serious views of 
life and its responsibilities, are all in the way of normal and healthy 
development: but to plunge them into politics, where they are not 
needed and for which they are unfit, would be scarcely more a 
movement of progress than to force them to bear arms and fight. 

WOMEN IN politics AN ANTIQUATED IDEA. 

The .social power of women has grown with the growth of 
civilization, but their political power has diminished. In former 
times and under low social conditions, women have occasionally had 
a degree of power in public affairs unknown in the foremost nations 
of the modern world. The most savage tribes on this continent, the 
Six Nations of New York, listened in solemn assembly, to the 
coun.sels of its matrons, with a deference that has no parallel 
among its civilized successors. The people of ancient Lycia, at a 
time when they were semi-barbarians, gave such power to their 
womefl that they were reported to live under a gynecocracy, or 
female government. The word gynecocracy, by the way, belongs to 
antiquity. It has no application in modern life; and, in the past, its 
applications were found, not in the higher developments of ancient 
society, but in the lower. Four hundred years before Christ, the 
question of giving political power to women was agitated among the 

II 


most civilized of ancient people, the Athenians, and they would not 
follow the example of their barbarian neighbors. 

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN VOTING AND FIGHTING. 

The advocates of woman suffrage have ridiculed the idea of any 
connection between voting and the capacity to fight. Their attitude 
in this matter shows the absence of reflection on questions of govern¬ 
ment, or the inability to form rational judgment upon them. In fact, it 
is with nearly all of them a matter, not of reason, but of sentiment. 

The human race consists of two equal parts, the combatant and 
the non-combatant, and these parts are separated by the line of sex. 
It is true that some men are permanently disabled from fighting, 
and others may be disabled in one year or one month, and fit to bear 
arms in the next; but the general fact remains that men are the 
fighting half of humanity, and women are not. Fundamental laws 
are made in reference to aggregates of persons, and not to individual 
exceptions ; and it would be absurd to exact a surgeon’s certificate of 
military competency from every voter at the polls. It is enough 
that he belongs to a body which, as a whole, can and will fight. 
The question remains. What has this to do with voting ? It has a 
great deal to do with it, and above all in a government purely 
popular. 

THE VOTING OF A LARGE NON-COMBATANT CLASS 
DANGEROUS TO CIVIL HARMONY. 

Since history began, no government ever sustained itself long 
unless it could command the physical force of the nation; and this, 
whether the form of government was despotism, constitutional mon¬ 
archy, or democracy. The despot controls the army which compels 
the people to obey; the king and parliament control the force of the 
kingdom, and malcontents dare not rise in insurrection till they think 
they have drawn away an equal or greater share of it. Finally, the 
majority in a democratic republic feels secure that its enactments will 
take effect, because the defeated minority, even if it does not respect 
law, will respect a force greater than its own. But suppose the 
majority to consist chiefly of women. Then legality would be on one 


•12 


side and power on the other. The majority would have the law, and 
the minority the courage and strength. Hence, in times of political 
excitement, when passions were roused and great interests were at 
stake, the majority, that is, the legal authority, would need the help 
of a standing army. Without such support the possession of the 
suffrage by the non-combatant half of the nation would greatly 
increase the chances of civil discord. Once in our history a minority 
rose against the majority, in the belief that it could out-fight it. 
This would happen often if the minority, as in the supposed case of 
woman suffrage, had not only the belief but the certainty that it 
could master the majority. It may not be creditable to human nature 
that if we would have a stable government it is necessary to keep the 
balance of power on the side of law; but the business of government 
is to shape itself to the actual, and not to the ideal or millennial, 
condition of mankind. 

Suppose, again, a foreign war in which the sympathies of our 
women were enlisted on one side or the other. Suppose them to 
vote against the judgment of the men that we should take part in it; 
or, in other words, that their male fellow citizens should fight 
whether they liked it or not. Would the men be likely to obey? 

ANOTHER SOURCE OF DISCORD. 

There is another reason why the giving of the suffrage to women 
would tend to civil discord. In the politics of the future, the 
predominant, if not the engrossing, questions will be to all appear¬ 
ance those of finance and the relations of labor and capital. From 
the nature of their occupations, as well as other causes, women in 
general are ignorant of these matters, and not well fitted to deal with 
them. They require an experience, a careful attention, a deliberation 
and coolness of judgment, and a freedom from passion, so rare that 
at the^Jbest their political treatment is full of difficulty and danger. 
If these qualities are rare in men, they are still more so in women, 
and feminine instinct will not in the present case supply their place. 
The peculiar danger of these questions is that they raise class 
animosities, and tend to set the poor against the rich and the rich 
against the poor. They become questions of social antagonism. 

13 


Now, most of us have had occasion to observe how strong the social 
rivalries and animosities of women are. They far exceed those of 
men. If, in the strife between labor and capital, which, without 
great self-restraint on both sides, is likely to be a fierce one, women 
should be called to an active part, the effect would be like throwing 
pitch and resin into the fire. The wives and daughters of the poor 
would bring into the contest a wrathful jealousy and hate against the 
wives and daughters of the rich, far more vehement than the corres¬ 
ponding passions in their husbands and brothers. / 

PRACTICAL VERSUS SENTIMENTAL "OOVERNMENT. 

The real issue is this : Is the object of government the good of 
‘ the governed, or is it not ? A late wTiter on woman suffrage says 
that it is not. According to her the object of government is to give 
his or her rights to everybody. Others among the agitators do not 
venture either on this flat denial or this brave assertion, but only 
hover about them with longing looks. Virtually they maintain that 
the object of government is the realization of certain ideas or theories. 
They believe in principles, and so do we; tliey believe in rights, and 
so do we. But as the sublime may pass into the ridiculous, so the 
best principles may be transported into regions of folly or diabolism. 
There are minds so constituted that they can never stop till they 
have run every virtue into its correlative weakness or vice. Govern¬ 
ment should be guided by principles; but they should be sane and 
not crazy, sober and not drunk. They should walk on solid ground, 
and not roam the clouds hanging to a bag of gas. 

Rights may be real or unreal. Principles may be true or false; 
ljut even the best and truest cannot safely be pushed too far, or in 
the wrong direction. The principle of truth itself may be carried 
into absurdity. The saying is old that the truth should not be 
spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience worries into 
habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and nuisances. 
Religion may pass into morbid enthusiasm or wild fanaticism, and 
turn from a blessing to a curse. So the best of political principles 
must be kept within bounds of reason, or they will work mischief. 
That greatest and most difficult of sciences, the science of the govern¬ 
ment, dealing with interests so delicate, complicated, and antagonistic, 
becomes a perilous guide when it deserts the ways of temperance. 

14 


SHALL WE STAND BY AMERICAN PRINCIPLES? 


The suffragists’ idea of government is not practical, but utterly 
unpractical. It is not American but French. It is that government 
of abstractions and generalities which found its realization in the 
French Revolution, and its apostle in the depraved and half-crazy 
man of genius, Jean Jacques Rousseau. The French had an excuse 
for their frenzy in the crushing oppression they had just flung off 
and their inexperience of freedom. We have no excuse. Since the 
nation began we have been free and our liberty is in danger from 
nothing but its own excesses. Since France learned to subject the 
ideas of Rousseau to the principles of stable freedom embodied in the 
parlimentary government of England and in our own republicanism, 
she has emerged from alternate tumult and despotism to enter the 
paths of hope and progress. 

The government of abstractions has' been called, sometimes the 
a priori, and sometimes the sentimental, method. We object to this 
last term, unless it is carefully defined. Sentiments, like principles, 
enter into the life of nations as well as that of individuals ; and they 
are vital to both. But they should be healthy, and not morbid ; 
rational, and not extravagant. It is not common sense alone that 
makes the greatness of states ; neither is it sentiments and principles 
alone. It is these last joined with reason, reflection, and moderation- 
Through this union it is that one small island has become the mighty 
mother of nations ; and it is because we ourselves, her greatest 
offspring, have chosen the paths of Hampden, Washington, and 
Franklin, and not those of Rousseau, that we have pas.sed safe 
through every danger, and become the wonder and de.spair of 
despotism. 

Out of the wholesome fruits of the earth, and the staff of life 
itself, the preverse chemistry of a man distils delirious vapors, which 
condensed and bottled, exalt his brain with glorious fantasies, and 
then leave him in the mud. So it is with the unhappy suffragists. 
From the sober words of our ancestors they extract the means of 
mental inebriety. Because the fathers of the republic gave certain 
reasons to emphasize their creed that America should not be taxed 
because America was not represented in the British Parliament, they 


15 


cry out that we must fling open the floodgates to vaster tides of 
ignorance and folly, strengthen the evil of our system and weaken 
the good, feed old abuses, hatch new ones, and expose all our large 
cities—we speak with deliberate conviction—to the risk of anarchy. 

Neither Congress, nor the States, nor the united voice of the 
whole people could permanently change the essential relations of the 
sexes. Universal female suffrage, even if decreed, would undo itself 
in time ; but the attempt to establish it would work deplorable mis¬ 
chief. The question is, whether the persistency of a few agitators 
shall plunge us blindfold into the most reckless of all experiments ; 
whether we shall adopt this supreme device for developing the defects 
of women, and demolish their real power to build an ugly mockery 
instead. For the sake of womanhood, let us hope not. In spite of 
the effect on the popular mind of the incessant repetition of a few 
trite fallacies, and in spite of the squeamishness that prevents the 
vast majority averse to the movement from uttering a word against 
it, let us trust that the good sense of the American people will vindi¬ 
cate itself against this most unnatural and pestilent revolution. In 
the full and normal development of womanhood lie the best interests 
of the world. Uet us labor earnestly for it; and, that we may not 
labor in vain, let us save women from the barren perturbations of 
American politics. Let us respect them ; and, that we may do so, 
let us pray for deliverance from female suffrage. 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 13 Elk 
Street. Albany, N. Y. 


The Blank-totridge Ballot. 

^ By Rossiter Johnson. 

» Take from your pocket a dollar bill, smooth it out, and look at 
it. It is handsomely engraved, its declarations are in good legal 
phrase, it is elaborately numbered, and it carries as a portrait either 
the strong face of Edwin M. Stanton or the handsome face of Martha 
Washington Why is it that that note will buy twenty loaves of 
bread, or a hundred bricks, or a new novel, or a ticket to the theater, 
or a forty-mile ride on a railroad ? Is it because paper is so precious, 
and ink so rare ? Is it because of the fine engraving, or the legal 
phraseology, or the interesting portrait ? All these circumstances are 
incidental and intrinsically worthless ; the one fact that gives it univer¬ 
sal purchasing power is the universal knowledge that somewhere 
behind it there is a piece of gold whose intrinsic value is equal to 
that of twenty loaves of bread, or a hundred bricks, or a new novel, 
or a seat in the theater, or a forty-mile railway ride, and that the 
holder of it can have that piece of gold whenever he chooses to call 
for it. Raise in the minds of the holders of those commodities a 
serious doubt as to the existence or the availability of that piece of 
gold, and you can no longer get the articles for your twenty-one 
square inches of printed paper. They will only smile at the por¬ 
traits and hand them back to you, though Mr. Stanton was for 
four years the most gigantic purchasing-agent that ever stood on this 
continent, and Martha Washington is the most revered of American 
women. 

If then, a piece of paper unbacked by metal cannot procure us 
a bag of salt or a yard of calico, can another piece, equally unbacked 
by metal, procure the passage and execution of laws, the revision of 
constitutions, the distribution of property, the regulation of wages, 
and the security of life ? 

The most civilized portions of mankind have not yet outgrown 
the measurement of force for the ultimate settlement of every great 
question, and the unit of force is the man capable of bearing arms. 
As the financial world has invented bank-notes, checks, and letters 
of credit, which pass current for the things they represent, while the 
savage is still trading only with his actual cowrie-shells, wampum. 




and lioop-iron, so various devices have been brought into use by 
which available force can be measured and the result of a conflict be 
foretold, so that the destined losers submit without a conflict and 
thus save life and treasure. This is the philosophy of a popular 
election. The appeal to reason is made in the preliminary canvass. 
All the arguments, pro and con.^ are set forth—generally over and 
over again—by the orators, the journalists, and the talkers of the 
club-house and the tavern. Then the ballots are cast and counted, 
and the result is announced, and the announcement is essentially this : 

‘ ‘ So many thousand units of military force are enlisted on the 
affirmative side of this question, and so many thousand on the nega¬ 
tive.” Then those who find themselves in the minority give up, 
and permit the majority to have their way ; not because they are 
convinced that they have l)een in the wrong and their opponents in 
the right, but because they know that if they do not submit peaceably 
they will be compelled to do so. And no legal enactment or char¬ 
tered privilege can forever maintain the opposite state of affairs. 
We have had some notable instances of attempts in that direction, 
but all have failed. This was exemplified by the ” Dorr war ” in 
Rhode Island. For more than half a century after the establish¬ 
ment of our republic, the government of that State was still based 
on a charter granted by Charles II. This gave the right of suffrage 
only to men who had real estate to the amount of $134 and to their 
eldest sons, and legislative representation was so arranged that New¬ 
port had six members, while Providence, with a population three 
times as great, had only four. In 1842 there was an insurrection of 
the majority who were thus wronged, and though the forms of law 
were all in favor of the prescriptive rights of the minority, and the 
military were called upon to subdue the rebellion, and the National 
Government recognized existing State authorities, yet the outcome 
was a new constitution with a proper division of power. This was 
yielded by the minority, not because they suddenly woke up to the 
fact that they were doing wrong—all that had been clearly set forth 
long before—but simply because they recognized the presence of a 
force that would compel them to. Twenty years later we had ano¬ 
ther, and vastly greater, experience in which the metallic power 
behind the paper ballot had to be actually brought into play. No¬ 
body denied that the presidential election of i860 was fairly con¬ 
ducted and the result correctly declared. But it turned on a very 
important question, and feeling ran high. Those who found them¬ 
selves in a minority believed that they were still so numerous and so 
united, and had so many circumstances in their favor, that they need 
not submit; and accordingly they refused to do so. Thereupon the 
majority proceeded to compel them, and though it was an enormous 
and bloody task, it was carried through to completion, and the 


minority were convinced—not that they were in the wrong, but sim¬ 
ply that they were a minority of the military- power as well as of the 
ballot-casters. If half of Grant’s army had fired nothing but blank 
cartridges, Lee never would have surrendered. 

And since the civil war we have had another exhibition of the 
same principle, in a different way, which still remains with us as a 
gigantic object-lesson showing the impotence of a blank-cartridge 
ballot. The colored men of the Southern States have the legal right 
to vote, yet they are not permitted to vote in any place, or to any 
extent, that would turn the scale of an election. This is not from 
lack of intelligence ; for many of them are well educated, and are 
quite as intelligent as some of the whites. It is not because they 
are untaxed ; for, although they began in 1865 with absolutely noth¬ 
ing, they now pay taxes on an assessment of ten million dollars in 
Virginia, twelve million in Georgia, fifteen million in Texas, and 
similar sums in other States. It is simply because the white men are 
fully armed, and understand very thoroughly the art of organization. 
If the time should ever come when every colored man owns a Win¬ 
chester rifle, and when the race has learned how to organize, then 
the colored vote will be cast and will be counted. 

All this may be very deplorable, but it is the state of affairs that 
exists, and with it we are compelled to deal. Nor is it confined 
to our country. When gunpowder came into use, and the man on 
horseback was unseated, suffrage began to be popularized, and it 
has been widening ever since, but it only follows the development 
of the rifle. The successive enlargements of the franchise in Great 
Britain have all been wrung from the unwilling or hesitating consent 
of those who, being themselves enfranchised, held the place of an 
aristocracy, and grudgingly shared their privileges with an awaken¬ 
ing and dangerous power. In the United States, every good citizen 
deplores the naturalization of foreign-born men who have not been 
long enough in the country to understand its institutions. But the 
only safety is in making the term of probation inversely propor¬ 
tional to the numbers that are coming, lest we acquire too large an 
unfranchised papulation, which by concentrating its strength may in 
some places overturn the civil order. The true remedy is to restrict 
immigration, or forbid it altogether for a term of years. The indi¬ 
vidual man will insist on buying what he wants and can pay for. If 
you refuse to take his check, he will bring on the gold. So, too, 
men in classes, communities or parties will insist upon what they 
think they have the right and the might for. If we refuse to let 
them stand up and be counted, they will stand up and fight—if they 
know how, or as soon as they learn how. It is galling to a citizen 
of education and refinement to see great and some times difficult 
questions decided by the votes of the new-comer and the illiterate ; 


but our only safety is manhood suffrage, because the final arbiter is 
manhood strength. 

These considerations lead directly to the conclusion that woman 
suffrage would be a serious mistake. A ballot put into the box by 
a woman would be simply a blank cartridge ; and already we have 
more than a million blank-cartridge ballots, all of which aresolemnl}^ 
warranted by law, but all of which counts for nothing, and will con¬ 
tinue to count for nothing until each is backed by a pellet of lead and 
a pinch of powder ready to enforce its decree. Our greatest peril 
arises from the even division of parties. When we elect a president 
by a popular majority of less than one per cent, of all the votes, 
there must always be a temptation to the defeated party to try the 
experiment of not submitting, and we have seen what this lead to 
in one notable instance. Nor is that the only instance. When a 
newly elected legislative body shows an almost even division of par¬ 
ties, there is pretty certain to be an attempt on the part of the 
minority to seize the place and power of the majority. Then we see 
a city hall besieged, or the doors of an assembly-chamber battered 
down with axes. To make any party victorious at the polls by means 
of blank-cartridge ballots would only present an increased tempta¬ 
tion to the numerical minority to assert itself as the military ma¬ 
jority. Under ordinary circumstances the law might be allowed to 
have its way ; but sooner or later we should arrive at an extraordi¬ 
nary election, and then—revolution. Doubtless it would be a righteous 
spectacle to see a million women and half a million men outvoting 
eight hundred thousand men on some great moral question ; but 
when the eight hundred thousand declined to submit, who is going 
to make them? “ You are to bid any man stand, in the prince’s 
name. How if he will not stand? Why, then take no note of him, 
but let him go ; and presently call the rest of the watch together 
and thank God you are rid of a knave. You are to call at all the 
ale-houses, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed. How 
if they will not f Why, then, let them alone till they are sober ; if 
they make you not then the better answer, you may say they are not 
the men you took them for.” 

” But,” says a woman who seeks to be a voter, ” I own prop- 
erty, and I pay taxes on it, and I cannot think that taxation with¬ 
out representation is just.” This plea has been repeated so often 
that it is time to point out its fallacy. There are two kinds of taxes 
—a money tax and a service tax. The money tax is levied on prop¬ 
erty, men’s and women’s alike, pro rata. The service tax is levied 
on men alone. It calls for jury service, police service, military ser¬ 
vice, and every man takes his chances on it. Sometimes one goes 
through his seventy years without suffering from it at all ; again he 
spends weary hours in the jury room, or he is sworn in as a special 


~r 


constable to quell a riot and fight a mob, or he is called to camp and 
battlefield, where he may lose a limb, or an eye, or his life. Repre¬ 
sentation goes with this kind of taxation, and not with the other. 
Property is protected by the Government, as women are ; but prop¬ 
erty, whether man’s or woman’s, has no representation. If it had, 
it must necessarily be in some degree proportional. Mr. Astor would 
have hundreds of times as many votes as I, and I perhaps would 
have twice as many as the man that sweeps out my office. Instead 
of that, Mr. Astor has one vote, and I have one vote. And the rea¬ 
son is plain and unanswerable ; it is because Mr. Astor can carry one 
musket, the sweeper can carry one musket, I can carry one musket. 
We are all equal on the ballot, because we are all equal on what the 
ballot represents. Mr. Astor enjoys his great property because the 
sweeper and I are ready to shoulder our muskets and protect him in 
it ; the sweeper is secure in his little earnings because Mr. Astor and 
I are ready to stand by him with our muskets ; I find it worth while 
to be industrious because Mr. Astor and the sweeper make it dan¬ 
gerous for anybody to molest me. Without this protection, our 
possessions would be of no value ; this protection we contribute in 
equal measure, man for man ; and this same protection we extend to 
our sisters, our cousins and our aunts. Frequently an election is fr»r 
the purpose of determining under what laws and in what manner this 
protection shall be exercised ; and those who furnish the protection 
rightfully claim the privilege of dictating its form. The woman- 
suffragists, so far from suffering taxation without representation, are 
asking to be represented where they are not taxed. 

But cripples and blind men vote. Yes, they do, and simply 
because they are so few that it has not been thought worth while to 
bar them out. And many men vote who are not liable to military duty; 
for regular service in a long campaign, a man more than forty-five 
years of age, or a man with weak lungs, would not be accepted. 
But such a man might still be very powerful in creating a riot or in 
suppressing one, in overthrowing a government or in sustaining one 
in an emergency, and this fact has to be recognized. 

It is not to be wondered at that an educated and patriotic woman 
frets a little when she sees an ignorant or vicious man going to the 
polls while she stays at home, nor that she should sometimes assert 
herself by asking if she is not intellectually and morally superior to 
him. So is a man intellectually superior to a sledge-hammer; but 
when he wishes to rend a granite rock he does not pry at it with his 
fingers ; he persuades the sledge-hammer to do his bidding. Sim¬ 
ilarly, it would be futile for her to go to the ballot box and with her 
own fair hand throw in a blank-cartridge ballot; but if through 
argument or entreaty she can persuade a musket-bearer to throw a 
right ballot instead of a wrong one, she can accomplish something 


y" 


worthy. And the means of enlightening and convincing voters, 
through print and oratory, are all quite as free to women as to men. 
An unenforcible ballot would be as useless as an irredeemable cur¬ 
rency, and far more mischievous. 

This subject of the suffrage is not a question of courtesy and 
chivalry toward women—those are abundantly shown in the statutes 
of nearly every State, which are more favorable to women than to 
men. It is a question of the stability of our government, and the 
success of democratic institutions. Universal peace has not yet 
arrived ; the great struggle that has wrenched mankind through the 
ages is still going on, and one may see it in various phases in our 
own country as well as in the bristling armies of Europe. Men 
nevt^r have, whether .savage or civilized, been accustomed, in fighting 
their battles, to put the non-combatants in the forefront, whose 
station in the rear may be quite as honorable and far more useful. 
Wherever we place the ballot, manhood must necessarily be the 
power behind it to give it effect ; and manhood suffrage is therefore 
the logical suffrage and the only .safe experiment. 

The planet on which we live was once a molten mass, and 
nobody knows how many million years the process of cooling went 
on before it had a solid crust sufficient to support the various forms 
of life.^ That it was far slower than earlier cosmogonists believed 
is shown by every successive advance of science. A generation ago 
the geologists told us the crust was about fifty miles thick, now 
they calculate it at seven miles, and Vesuvius and Krakatoa and 
Kilauea still mutter their awful warnings. Socially, we are in a 
similar condition— 

For we are ancients of the earth, 

And in the morning of the times. 

When the good Prince Albert, in 1851, invented world’s fairs 
and organized the first one, it was hoped that the brotherhood of 
man had been demonstrated, and the era of universal peace begun ; 
but in three years there was a bloody war that involved more than 
half of Europe, in which the only thing contended for was commer¬ 
cial supremacy. And many who read this page have seen in our 
freest of all free countries a million men fighting to the death and 
spending their last dollar for what they themselves now admit was a 
mistake. Boast as we may of our inventions, our arts and our 
learning, our fair gardens, our romantic palaces, and our courts of 
equity, we have yet but a thin crust of civilization spread over a 
heated mass of savagery ; and organized force is all that saves us 
from anarchy. Of all the women who are asking for an irrespon¬ 
sible ballot, there is not one who would dare to walk through our 
metropolis in broad daylight, past its churches, its art-galleries and 
its court houses, if it were not for the policeman at the corner and 


the great armory whose shadow crosses the avenue and falls upon 
the steps of the sanctuary; and of the unthinking men who wish to 
give it to them from a vague sense of fairness, there is not one 
who could go alone into the coal-regions and proclaim his opinion 
that the great strike is unjust. 

Such is the brutal truth about the suffrage and its basis ; and a 
brutal truth, when it exists, must be admitted and reckoned wdth 
like any other truth. In our elections as now held, there is no 
security for the verdict unless the majority is sufficient to assure 
those who are in the minority that if they refuse to submit they will 
be coerced. With the proposed extension of the suffrage, if the 
votes of the women are so divided as not to affect the result, then 
the women might as well not have voted, and their presence at the 
polls wall be a useless and costly addition to the electoral machinery. 

On the other hand, if an election is carried by a preponderance 
of votes cast by women, who is to enforce the verdict ? When a few 
such verdicts have been overturned, we shall find ourselves in a state 
of anarchy. 

We may admit all that those excellent women say about the 
purity of their politics, their determination to educate themselves on 
public questions, and the probability that they would vote in the 
interests of civilization and good morals. The difficulty is, that the 
ignorant are not ignorant enough. When the virtuous woman, the 
well-bred woman, the enlightened woman, goes to the polls, she will 
meet there no man so ignorant as not to know perfectly well that his 
ballot has a metallic basis and must be respected, while hers is nothing 
but paper, and he may respect it or not, as he pleases. 


I 



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THE BULWARK OF INDIFFERENCE. 


In spite of the immense array of arguments and statistics mar¬ 
shalled by the opposing forces on the Woman’s Suffrage question, it 
seems to me that one fact is too little considered. I refer to the fact 
of woman’s indifference to the ballot. To quote the greatest states¬ 
man of modern times : “There has never within my knowledge 
been a case in which the franchise has been extended to a large body 
of persons generally indifferent about receiving it ! ’ ’ 

Our ears are weary of the cry reiterated by the suffragists : 
“If you do not wish the ballot at least permit us to have it.” Such 
has not been the history of great movements! The will of the majority- 
however perverted, however uninformed—holds the reins of power. 
The suffragists must confess that in the Eastern States, at least they 
are but a remnant.’’ In their own eyes, perhaps, Matthew 
Arnold’s “incomparable, all-transforming remnant,’’ but their busi¬ 
ness as a “remnant’’ is to convert the majority—then their cause is 
won 1 To remove woman’s indifference to a sudden and appalling 
increase of burdens laid upon her is the only legitimate work of the 
Suffragists ! This besieging of legislatures, this worrying of con¬ 
ventions, the din and clamor with which men of influence are 
pursued is unworthy and unwise. Every Woman Suffragist knows 
that if a majority of her own sex demanded the ballot, she would get 
it. Men, nearly always chivalrous at heart, yield to what they 
believe women desire. 

Why are Women Indifferent? 

The fact is, that the last twenty years has opened such new 
avenues for woman’s activities, the arena stretching before her is 
already so vast that even in her haste to be on an equality with man 
she shrinks from the too-multifarious and bewildering duties of 
political life. She has not yet attained the sure footing in her busi¬ 
ness and professional life that could make her wish to grapple with 
the most subtle and difficult problems the twentieth century has to 
face. 

What are her opportunities at present ? From a recent census 
bulletin it is discovered there are 1,025,525 women employed in the 
manufacturing and mechanical industries of the United Stales; 
679,509 women carrying on agriculture, fisheries and mining, and 
268,726 in the professions, 245,230 of which are teachers. In steno- 




i 


graphy and type-writing women out-number men two to one. There 
are 129 butchers, 191 carpenters, 83 undertakers, 24 hostlers, 
4 locomotive engineers, 59 blacksmiths, 2 auctioneers and i pilot. 
There are 237 female hackmen, 3,949 actresses, 1,235 ministers, 
4.555 physicians, 337 dentists, 208 female lawyers, 22 architects, 
888 journalists, 6,714 literary and scientific women and 10,810 
devotees of the arts. In addition to these are the hosts of those in 
older occupations, boarding-house keeping, store-keeping, dress¬ 
making, and domestic service. It will be seen women do not need 
the ballot to give them a chance to earn their daily bread ! 

There are deep causes for the indifference of women to political 
duties. Active, eager-hearted women pushed by circumstances into 
the world find their hands more than full in learning to equip them¬ 
selves for the new careers opened to them in the last twenty years. 
They are willing to leave to men the field which is peculiarl}^ their 
own. The exigencies of the time demand a division of labor, and in 
the political field women are not unmindful that men have in the 
main been quick to protect their interests. But it is not among the 
professional women, the business women, the ivorking women where 
the bulwark of indifference may be said to be the strongest. It is 
among the thousand home-keeping women of the state, whose busy 
lives are filled with daily service along the traditional lines of “good 
mothers,” “good neighbors,” “good wives,” where the indifference, 
nay shrinking from political burdens, is the greatest. It is this 
inertia which our friends, the Suffragists, must overcome! Can they 
do it f Until they have touched what may be termed the heart of 
the Commonwealth, their cause is not won ! 

In the closing years of this century, in some respects more rest¬ 
less and turbulent than preceeding ones, the bewildered spirit, worn 
by the jar and fret of endless controversy, finds solace and hope in 
this bulwark of Indifference, which, representing the conservative 
instincts of the community, stands as a safe-guard to the reckless 
encroachments of a “remnant” of the people ! 


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THE NEW WOMAN. 


By Ouida in North American Review. 


Woman, whether new or old, has immense fields of 
culture untilled, immense areas of influence wholly neglected. 
She does almost nothing with the sources she possesses, 
because her whole energy is concentrated on desiring and 
demanding those she has not. 

* * 

Her influence on children might be so great that 
through them she would practically rule the future of the 
world ; but she delegates her influence to school boards if she 
be poor, and if she be rich to governesses and tutors ; nor 
does she in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred ever attempt 
to educate or control herself into fitness for the personal 
exercise of such influence. 

* * * 

The immense area which lies open to her in private 
life is almost entirely uncultivated, yet she wants to be 
admitted into public life. 




Women’s legislation would be, as that of men is too 
often, the offspring of panic or prejudice ; and she would 
not put on the dray of common-sense as man frequently does 
in public assemblies. There would be little to hope from 
her humanity, nothing from her liberality ; for when she is 
frightened she is more ferocious than he, and when she has 
power more merciless. 

^ 

The New Woman is a menace to human kind with her 
fierce vanity, her undigested knowledge, her overweening 
estimate of her own value and her fatal want of all sense of 
the ridiculous. 

* * * * 

The error of the New Woman lies in speaking of 
women as the victims of men, and entirely ignoring the 
frequency with which men are victims of women. 

^ ^ 

It never seems to occur to the accusers of man that 
women are just as vicious and as lazy as he in nine cases out 
of ten, and need no invitation from him to become so. 

^ ^ ^ ^ 

Woman may help man sometimes, but she certainly 
more often hinders him. Her self-esteem is immense and 
her self-knowledge very small. I view with dread of the 
future of the world, the power which modern inventicms 
place in the hands of a woman. Hitherto her physical 
weakness has restrained her in a great measure from violent 
action ; but a woman can make a bomb and throw it, can 
fling vitriol, and fire a repeating revolver as well as any man 


can. These are precisely the deadly, secret, easily handled 
modes of warfare and revenge, which will commend them¬ 
selves to her ferocious feebleness. 

Everything which tends to obliterate the contrast of the 
sexes, tends also to destroy the charm of intercourse, the 
savor and sweetness of life. 

Neither men nor women of genius are any criterion for 
the rest of their sex ; nay, they belong, as Plato placed them, 
to a third sex which is above the laws of the multitude. But 
even whilst they do so, they are always the foremost to 
recognize that it is the difference, not the likeness which 
makes the charm of human life. 

* * * * 

Every word, whether written or spoken, which urges 
the woman to antagonize against the man, every word which 
is written or spoken to try and make of her a hybrid, self- 
contained opponent of men, makes a rift in the lute to which 
the world looks for its sweetest music. 



BISHOP SEYMOUR ON THE 



WOMAN. 


God Created Man and Woman Somewhat 
Differently—The Difference can¬ 
not Be Obliterated. 


The Right Rkv. Gko. E\ Seymour, D. D., while con¬ 
versing with a Times reporter said: “God created male and 
female in the image of God. The image of God unites 
them and the hand of God differentiates them in making 
them two halves of a whole. Each has its place, and the 
woman has, if one pleases, the better place, as she is the 
‘better half.’ 

“Having said this, I wish to add that God, in making 
woman, implied her place in her physicial constitution, 




organic functions, and practical duties. These lines are 
drawn by the divine hand. Human hands may seek to 
obliterate these lines and succeed in ob.scuring them, but 
they cannot destroy them. 

“Man may apparently su.spend for a time the laws of 
God by his presumption and folh% but he cannot repeal 
them, and human genius and alnlity cannot create a new 
man, much less a new woman. They may .seem to do so in 
a wretched counterfeit and distortion, which may .seem for 
a time to be a success, and gratif}', and perchance amu.se 
tho.se who covet novelties, but in the end it will be, and 
must be a failure. 

“The blessed gospel of our Tord and Savior Jesus 
Christ, has steadily emancipated woman from the thraldom 
under which the brutality and lust of man had brought her, 
and restored her to the place which God originally a.ssigned 
her. 

“As a son, as a brother, as a hu.sbaiid, I ble.ss God 
for the place which he gave women in creation, and to 
which he restored her in the person of Jesus Chri.st in the 
ble.ssed gospel. x\s a woman, as God made her and as Chri.st 
dignified her, .she is all glorious within, and protected by the 
reverence and affection of the civilized world. As the new 
woman, sh^ will b^ divorced from the home, from her chib 


dren, from her brothers, from her husband, and from her 
former self, and become a creature indescribable.” 

The officers of the Anti-Sulfrage societ}' of Third 
Judicial District, State of New York, are 

Mr,s. J. V. L. Pkuyn, - - President. 

Mr.s. \Viij.iam J. Wallack, ist Mee-President. 
Mrs. Wm. Bayard Van ReNvSSKdakr, 

Secretary. 

Mrs. Joseph Gavit, - - Treasurer, 

li. ecu th 'c Com m it tee , 

Mrs. W. Winseow Crannell, Chairman. 
Mrs. Erastus Corning, 

Mrs. William Cassidy, 

Mrs. J. Howard King, 

Mrs. Joel R. Reed, 

Mrs. Wm. O. Stillman, 

Mrs. Frederick Townsend. 

Mlss Lucy A. Ply.^ipton, 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage A.ssociation 
13 Phk vStreet, Albany. 



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“The New Woman” and the problems of the day. 


(^F?'om Appletoii*s Popular Science Monthly.) 


As there ’is a new everything in these days, we suppose it was 
inevitable that there should l)e a “new woman though why a new 
woman more than a new man it might not be easy to explain. For 
our part we believe but faintly in “new woman;” we believe in 
woman. We believe in progress ; we believe that new times call for 
new measures ; we believe that these are new times, and that it 
behooves both men and women to prepare themselves to meet the 
demands which the age is making on them. ‘Men and women every¬ 
where have been roused, we might almost say stung, into a sense of 
individual existence ; and, looking round on their changing environ¬ 
ment, they are asking a thousand questions to which as yet no very 
certain answers can be vouchsafed. Woman is awake because man 
is awake ; the keenness of the times has roused them both ; and from 
both we seem to hear the itiquiry made by the jailer at Philippi, when 
startled from slumber by the trembling ot the earth and the flashing 
of a strange light : “What must I do to be saved?” The difference 
between the so-called “new woman” and woman without that qualifi¬ 
cation is that the latter would wish to be saved with man and the 
former apparently without him. 

The two principal questions which to-day confront society relate 
to the future relations of men and women and the education of the 
rising generation. The allegation is freely made in many quarters 
that marriage is a failure ; and no doubt frequently it is. None the 
less, however, is it the case that no scheme that has ever been pro¬ 
posed as a substitute for marriage merits a moment’s consideration. 
It is easy to provide theoretically for the gratification of passion and 
impulse, but not so easy by any means to show how by any union 
less* solemn and abiding than marriage the higher natures of men and 
women can be duly developed and their lower propensities kept in 
check. We do not look to any new women for light on this question; 
but we do look to the best women of to-day to join with the best men 
in indicating the higher path which the generations of the future may 
tread. There is a gospel on the subject which has to be preached and 





so far as individual action can do it, enforced, the gospel that there is 
more in marriage than for the most part poets have sung or romancers 
dreamed, and that the failures of which we hear so much have been, 
in the main, failures to grasp the true conception of it and to make a 
right preparation for the duties which it involves. 

The hope of the future lies mainly in well ordered homes—homes 
in which children are trained to be just, reasonable and humane, in 
which they are taught to look with an intelligent eye upon the 
phenomena alike of Nature and of society, in which they learn 
lessons of industry and self-reliance, of honor, purity and self-respect, 
and are guarded against the vulgar worship of wealth and worldly 
success. It is for the wise and noble women of our time to help to 
make such homes, and it is for men to see to it that they are worthy 
of partnership in so sacred a cause. It is no time for any silly 
rivalry or futile opposition between men and women, who are as 
necessary to one another now as at any previous age in the world’s 
history—nay more necessary. On the contrary, it is a time for 
earnest council and vigorous co-operation on the part of all who have 
the interest of the present and future generations at heart; and the 
less we hear of the separate and conflicting claims of men and women 
the better. There is ample scope to-day for the efforts of all, and if 
any stand idle in the vineyard, it must be from lack of will, not from 
lack of opportunity. 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 13 Elk 
Street, Albany, N. Y. 


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From Buffalo (New York) Express^ ^^ 97 - 

THE S ILENT W OMAN. 

An Expression op Anti-Suffragist Sentiment—Voting is a 
Dead Issue—The Leading Women of a Western State 
Indifferent to the Matter — Suffrage Lectures 
Ignored—MUvST the Opposition Break Sieence in Or¬ 
der TO BE Effective ?—Future of Suffragists. 


A New York woman who has spent the winter in a leading city 
of one of the middle Western States, enjoying exceptional oppor¬ 
tunities for meeting the women who are its leaders in social and club 
life, was asked recently by the Anti-Suffrage League of New York, 
of which she is a member, to make an initiatory movement for the 
organization of a State anti-suffrage society in the cit3^ where she 
was a guest. After laying the subject before the women who might 
be properly chosen to head such a movement, those identified with 
the best social and intellectual life, her answer to the Anti-Suffrage 
League of New York in substance was as follows : 

“ The women of this cit^^ are not interested in the suffrage move¬ 
ment ; and they fairly represent the women of the State. They 
look upon the question as a dead issue. They say—‘ Why organize 
to oppose what we care so little about? And then, the anti-suffra¬ 
gists of New-York are settling the matter for the whole country.’ ” 


The New-York woman had noted that the question never came 
up in the woman’s clubs of that middle-west metropolis. She had 
enjoyed that feature of discussions, after what she had known in the 
clubs at home—where the political equality of woman was rung in, 
no matter its remoteness from the subject in hand. Nor was it the 
indifference of ignorance. Having had enough of the subject it had 
been dropped. A lecture by a prominent suffragist, before one of 
the Greek letter societies of the university of the city, the lecturer a 
graduate of the university, had excited little interest, not even a 
note of opposition, eloquently as she had depicted the wrongs of her 
sex, and striven to kindle revolt. It would have been folly to organ- 





ize an anti-suffrage league in such a community, and yet, the sut- 
fragists are planning a raid upon the town, and possibly the Silent 
Woman will yet see that she made a mistake. 


It has taken nearly a half century to convince the Silent Woman 
of those States where the suffragist has a strong support, and assumes 
to speak for all the women of her State, county and town in her 
demand for the ballot, that unless she makes open protest against 
having the ballot thrust upon her against her will, she may yet find 
herself burdened with what she must not only accept but use ; and 
that her silence is helping the suffragist to win a victory quite as 
much as if she signed suffragist petitions and spoke from suffragist 
platforms. 

The Silent Woman has been forced, in New-York State at least, 
to take sides ; to protest against being included in the venerable pre¬ 
lude of the majority of suffrage petitions; “We the women of” 
etc., etc. 

As long as the male citizen would speak for her, and vote for 
her right to reject the ballot, the Silent Woman had been more than 
satisfied not to appear in the arena where the suffragists delighted to 
be. But when the male citizen chivalrously bowed himself off the 
field, leaving the women to settle their differences of opinion between 
themselves, declaring that he was ready to give or withhold the bal¬ 
lot, as a majority should decide, what help was there for the Silent 
Woman but to gird herself for battle ? to defend her right to be bal¬ 
lotless if so she chose to remain. 


Noiselessly, with no flourish of bulletins or platform harangues, 
the Silent Woman has been in evidence already, on several notable 
occasions, the dexterity of her sudden checkmate a surprise to her 
adversary. What did the bulky petition that the suffragist lay be¬ 
fore the ^New-York Constitutional convention (an unending list of 
signatures gathered without discrimination) amount to when offset 
by the protest of the Silent Woman—every signature of weight — 
“ quality counting more than quantity,” a protest against having 
that word “ male ” struck out from the Constitution, as the suffragist 
pray that it might be. Then, for the first time, the Silent Woman 
felt her power ; and the suffragist recognized the fact that “ tyrant 
man” was as nothing in comparison to the Silent Woman. And 
when the suffragist confronted the Silent Woman again at the St. 
Louis Convention, saw her actually standing up in committee and 




protesting in the name of the great majority of the women of the 
country against the plank the suffragist had ready for the Republi¬ 
can platform (another victory,) what wonder that the suffragist lost 
her temper quite, and one of the results of that defeat has been the 
decision to postpone active warfare in New-York State for awhile, 
“whose conservative ideas and a large illiterate population,” (to 
quote from Miss Anthony) “prevent that State from falling into 
line as soon as some of the Western States undoubtedly will. ’ ’ 


The tactics of the opposing forces have little in common. The 
suffragist declares that the Silent Woman is a foe in ambush, so 
secret are her movements, so sudden her descent when least expected. 
New-York State is now well covered with anti-suffrage leagues ; as 
are some of the New England States. There is no holding of con¬ 
ventions, save parlor conferences, unreported by the press. The 
Silent Woman is proving that almost any one of the leaders of her 
cause can do quite as much with a visiting-card as a platform woman 
can do on the other side in addressing a mass-meeting. 

It is the social influence that tells most with the majority of 
women—something that the suffragist is learning and adopting with 
considerable success. The Anti-Suffrage Leagues publish and dis¬ 
tribute a vast number of leaflets, but they have no special organ ; 
nor does the Silent Woman, like the the suffragist, stop her paper 
when it advocates what she thinks an injury to her cause ; nor has 
she learned to maintain a “Woman’s column” in some prominent 
daily, a column that she can control so far at least as to give it an 
anti-suffrage trend, if in only a single item or paragraph. 


“ I don’t want the ballot and I won’t have it.” That sums up 
all that the average Silent Woman cares to say upon the subject. 
She is not to be led into a debate with the suffragist. She knows 
the suffrage argument by heart. Has she not heard it for nearly 
50 years? Why waste breath in denying that she is “ the slave of 
man -’; that she is ‘ ‘ in financial slavery ’ ’; that she is indebted to 
the suffrage movement for legal rights, and for all the advance made 
by her sex within the last 50 years ? The fundamental statements 
of the suffragists are fallacies to her, particularly that one before all 
others a foundation-stone : “ Man is bad, woman is good, man is a 
failure as a politician ; woman would be a success ; the ballot in the 
hand of woman will remedy all the ills of higher civilization. . . .” 




The Silent Woman knows better; why discuss the subject? 
She knows how the women voted in the three States where they 
could at the last Presidential election, and gives thanks that there 
are no more stars on the suffrage banner. She does not believe in 
the total depravity of man, nor in the total righteousness of woman. 
She believes that the vote of the illiterate foreign woman of New 
York would not hasten the arrival of the millennium, and she knows 
that she can do more for the advancement of every true reform with¬ 
out the ballot than with it. 

There is a pathetic phase in the suffrage ranks just now—an 
annual eulogizing of the venerable veterans of the movement upon 
their birthdays—the laying of anticipatory laurels upon their mem¬ 
ory. When that is over—when the heroes of the lost Waterloos 
have disappeared, who is to take their places? 

The coming leader of the suffragists has not yet put in an 
appearance. The signs are that when the veterans are gone, disin¬ 
tegration of the party will follow—petty jealousies dividing it into 
petty cliques never to be consolidated into a grand arm3^ 

The suffrage movement has been a grand safety-valve for the 
discontented woman in revolt, a type as old as creation, coeval with 
that of the discontented man. Next? Something must be already 
emerging from what Carlyle called ‘ ‘ the endless vortices of froth- 
logic,” to fill the gap the suffrage movement will leave in its wake. 


” The signs of the times cease to alarm me,” wrote Towell to a 
friend, “and seem as natural as to a mother is the teething of her 
seventh baby. I take great comfort in God. I think He is con¬ 
siderably amused with us sometimes, but that He likes us on the 
whole, and would not let us get at the match-box so carelessly as He 
does unless He knew that the frame of His universe was fire-proof. 
How many times have I seen the fire-engines of Church and State 
clanging and lumbering along to put out—a false alarm. And when 
the heavens are cloudy what a glare can be cast from a burning 
shanty.” 

” It may be a false alarm.” says the Silent Woman, ” but we 
don’t want the ballot and we won’t have it—so there.” 


A. S. W. 





The Woman’s Bible. 


When Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Rev. Phebe Hanaford, Clara 
Bewick Colby, the Rev. Augusta Chapin, Mrs. Mary A. Eivermore, 
Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell, Mrs. Josephine K. Henry, Mrs. Robert 
C. Ingersoll, Mrs. Sarah A. Underwood, Mrs. Catherine F. Stebbins, 
Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Mrs. Cornelia Collins Hussey, Lillie Devereux 
Blake, Matilda Joslyn Gage, the Rev. Olympia Brown, Miss Frances 
Ellen Burr, Mrs. Chapman Catt, Miss Helen H. Gardner, Mrs. 
Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, Mrs. Lucinda B. Chandler, Mrs. M. 
Louise Thomas, Mrs. Louisa Southworth, Mrs. Martha R. Almy, 
and other prominent women suffragists announced to the world that 
they had constituted themselves a revising committee of the Bible, 
or at least to revise “those texts and chapters directly referring to 
women, and those also where women are made prominent by exclu¬ 
sion claiming as a basis for their work that “ women’s political 
and social degradation are but an outgrowth of their status in the 
Bible,” no one deemed it more than the utterance of an illogical 
disputant. 

But ever and anon there crept into the press some article bearing 
reference to the fact that the revising committee was prosecuting its 
work. And yet the w'orld wagged on in its old way without thought 
of the- tremendous effort going on in its midst. At last it took 
form and shape. The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse ! 
The woman’s Bible, or that part of it known as the Pentateuch, is 
given to the public ! In the introduction is a little fling at Bishop 
Doane. He probably did not conceive that his name would go down 
to posterity thus honored. 




The book of Genesis is the one first combatted. They claim 
that when God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our 
likeness ’ ’ that instead of the Trinity handed down to us there 
were Father, Mother and Son. That if God created man in His own 
image, male and female, then He combined Himself the properties 
of both. It is said that the story that woman was created after man 
and not simultaneously with him “ was manipulated by some Jew, in 
an endeavor to give ‘ heavenly authority ’ for requiring the woman to 
obey the man she married.” Mrs. Stanton says : “ It is evident 

that some wily writer, seeing the perfect equality of man and woman 
in the first chapter, felt it important for the dignity and dominion of 
man to effect woman’s subordination in some way.” Mrs. Blake in 
following out Mrs. Stanton’s idea says that in naming the mother of 
the race “ ‘she shall be called woman’ in the ancient form of the word 
womb-man. She was man .and more than man because of her 
maternity.” (This is the point that the anti-suffragists insist 
upon ; and here is a law not laid down by man, incontrovertible, and 
defining woman’s sphere in life as separate from that of man.) 

The story of the fall is used to eulogize woman. Some “serious 
doubt” is expressed “as to the forbidden fruit being an apple, as 
none grew in that latitude.” But they console themselves with the 
thought that some man says : “It must have been a quince,” as given 
on page 24. Still, Satan had a profound knowledge of human nature, 
and saw at a glance the high character of the person he met, “as he 
did not try to tempt her by brilliant jewels, rich dresses, worldly 
luxuries or pleasures, but with the promise of knowledge.” 
“ Compared to Adam, she appears to great advantage through the 
entire drama.” 

We are reminded of a sermon we heard delivered by a country 
pastor on the Prodigal Son, who was seen by his father on his 
return, “ leaning on the picket fence, whereupon the father laid down 
the newspaper he was reading, wiped his spectacles, and said,” 
etc., etc. 

Mrs. Stanton comments bitterly on the cruelty and injustice of 
Abraham and Sarah to Hagar, and Clara Bewick Colby takes her 
to task for it; which shows that great minds do not always run in 


the same channel; but despite that, Mrs. Stanton goes on to say of 
Rebekah that “ she, too, is lacking in a nice sense of honor and 
with a truthfulness that carries her beyond the littlenesses of sex, 
she says of Rachel, her “character for theft and deception is still 
further illustrated,” and “ Potiphar’s wife surpasses all the women 
yet mentioned in perfidy and dishonor.” 

The commandments are “ chiefly for men,” but the fifth one is 
a surprise, as it refers to honoring the mother. Passing hastily on, 
we notice that the ‘ ‘ chief point of interest in the parable of Balaam 
and his ass, is that the latter belonged to the female sex.” Abraham 
is summed up by Mrs. Blake in these words : ‘ ‘ Like many a 

modern millionaire, he was not a self-made man, but a wife-made 
man,” as “ he gained wealth at the price of his wife’s dishonor.” 
The promises of God of ‘ ‘ great fruitfulness ’ ’ suggest the statement: 
“ If it had not been for polygamy and concubinage, the great har¬ 
vest so recklessly promised \^ipuld have been meagre indeed.”' And 
we find in closing this remarkable hyperbole : ‘ ‘ The utter contempt 

for all the decencies of life, and all the natural personal rights of 
women, as set forth in these pages,”—the Bible—“should destroy in 
the minds of women, at least, all authority to superhuman origin 
and stamp the Pentateuch at least as emanating from the most 
obscene minds of a barbarous age.” 

We think that the general reader will feel convinced that the 
cause of woman suffrage will not be advanced by this effort of the 
leaders to bring woman into prominence. 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 13 Elk 
Street, Albany. 



THE WOMAN’S BIBLE. 


Mrs. Stanton and her colleagues have written a collection of 
commentaries and criticisms on certain Scriptural passages involving 
the status of womankind, and called it “The Woman’s ’Bible.” It 
commences with this exordium, “The Bible teaches that woman 
brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall 
of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of 
Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to 
be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and 
anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a 
dependent on man’s bounty for all her material wants, and for all the 
information she might desire on the vital questions of the hour, she 
was commanded to ask her husband at home. 

Those who have the divine insight to translate, transpose and 
transfigure this mournful object of pity into an exalted, dignified 
personage, worthy of our worship as the mother of the race, are to 
be congratulated as having a share of the occult mystic power of the 
eastern Mahatmas.” 

Mrs. Stanton’s first important discovery is that the Trinity, 
contrary to general belief, is composed of a Heavenly Father, Mother 
and Son. This novel theory is based on the first chapter of Genesis, 
verses 26, 27 and 28. Concerning which she says, “Here is the 
sacred historian’s first account of the advent of woman ; a simul¬ 
taneous creation of both sexes, in the image of God. It is evident 
from the language that there was consultation in the Godhead, and 
that the masculine and feminine elements were equally represented. 
The first step in the elevation of woman to her true position, as an 
equal factor in human progress, is the cultivation of the religious 
sentiment in regard to her dignity and equality, the recognition by 
the rising generation of an ideal Heavenly Mother, to whom their 


pra3^ers should be addressed, as well as to a Father. If language 
has any meaning, we have in these texts a plain declaration of the 
existence of the feminine element in the Godhead, equal in power 
and glory with the masculine.” 

Mrs. Blake, as might have been expected, is very severe on 
Adam, in the episode of the Garden of Eden, and expresses serious 
doubts as to the forbidden fruit being an apple, as none grow in that 
latitude, but consoles herself with the thought that it may have been 
a quince. Referring to the conversation between Eve and the 
serpent, she remarks, “The tempter evidently had a profound 
knowledge of human nature, and saw at a glance the high character 
of the person he met by chance in his walks in the garden. He did 
not try to tempt her from the path of duty by brilliant jewels, rich 
dresses, worldy luxuries or pleasures, but with the promise of 
knowledge, with the wisdom of the Gods. Like Socrates or Plato, 
his powers of conversation and asking puzzling questions, were no 
doubt marvelous, and he roused in the woman that intense thirst for 
knowledge, that the simple pleasures of picking flowers and talking 
with Adam did not satisfy. Compared with Adam she appears to 
great advantage through the entire drama.” 

Mrs. Stanton is evidently a disciple of Malthus, for when she 
comes to the tragedy of Cain and Abel she writes, ‘ ‘ If Adam and 
Eve merited the severe punishment inflicted on them, they should 
have had some advice from the Heavenly Mother and Father as to 
the sin of propagating such an unworthy stock. No good avails in 
increasing and multiplying evil propensities and deformities that 
produce only crime and misery from generation to generation.” 

“The critical reading of the ten commandments,” observes 
Mrs. Stanton, “ will show that they are chiefly for men,” although 
she concedes the wisdom of the fifth one and does not object to the 
Golden Rule. Especially contemptuous are the comments on 
Aaron’s action in depriving the women of the jewels wherewith to make 
the golden calf. “To procure the gold he took the jewelry of the 
women, young and old, men never understanding how precious it is 
to them, and the great self-sacrifice required to part with it. But as 
the men generally give it to them during courtship, and as w^edding 


presents, they feel that they have a vested right therein for 
emergencies. 

It was just so in the American Revolution, in 1776, the first 
delicacy the men threw overboard in Boston Harbor was the tea, 
woman’s favorite beverage. The tobacco and whisky, though 
heavily taxed, they clung to with the tenacity of the devil-fish. 
Rather than throw their luxuries overboard they would no doubt 
have succumbed to King George’s pretensions. Men think that 
self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for 
women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they 
make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible. I would 
fain teach women that self-development is a higher duty than self- 
sacrifice. 

We are told many things, among others, speaking of the Ark, 
“The paucity of light and air in this ancient vessel shows that 
women had no part in its architecture, or a series of port-holes would 
have been deemed indispensable. ’ ’ 

“ That if Miriam had planned the journey to Canaan, it would 
have been accomplished in forty days, instead of forty years.’’ 

“ That the chief point of interest in the parable of Balaam and 
his ass, is that the latter belonged to the female sex. Her virtues 
have been quoted in the stately cathedral, in the courts of justice, 
in the editorial sanctum, in both tragedy and comedy on the stage, 
to point a moral and adorn a tale. Some of the fairest of Eve’s 
daughters bear her baptismal name, and she has been immortalized 
in poetry and prose. Wordsworth sends her with his Peter Bell to 
enjoy the first flowers of early spring.’’ 

‘ ‘ Though the women were ignored in all the civil affairs and 
religious observances of the Jews, yet in making wars on other tribes, 
they thought them too dangerous to be allowed to live, and so they 
killed all the women and children. The women might much better 
have helped to do the fighting, as it is far easier to die in the excite¬ 
ment of the battlefield than to be murdered in cold blood. In 
making war on neighboring tribes, the Jewish military code 
permitted them to take all the pure virgins, and child women for 
booty, to be given to the priests and soldiers, thus debauching the 


men of Israel and destroying all feelings of honor and chivalry for 
women. This utter contempt for all the decencies of life, and all 
the natural personal rights of women as set forth in these pages, 
should destroy in the minds of women at least, all authority to 
superhuman origin and stamp the Pentateuch at least as emanating 
from the most obscene minds of a barbarous age. ’ ’ 

We wonder if this work, which purports to represent the coming 
woman, who is to frame our laws, purify our politics and reform the 
scheme of creation generally, will bring many converts to her cause. 


THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE VOTE. 

An Analysis of It by the Man 
Suffrage Association. 


Every County and Every Congressional, Councillor, Sen» 
atorial and Representative District Went Against 
It—A Defeat Twice as Great as That Scored 
Against Prohibition. 

The Man Suffrage Association has analyzed the recent 
vote of the state on the question of granting muiiicipal suffrage 
to women, and has summed up its conclusions in a letter to the 
public. The letter follows : 

To the People of Mas.sachusetts : 

After 25 years of agitation by the suffragists the 
question of municipal suffrage for women has been brought to 
a test. The voters have been asked their opinion and have 
given an emphatic reply. 

Never before has there been so full an expression of 
opinion upon any question submitted to the people of Mass¬ 
achusetts. The vote for Governor at the state election was 
328,121. The vote of the men upon municipal woman suffrage 


was 273,976. Over 83 per cent, of those voting for Governor 
voted upon this question, while upon the most important 
amendment to the constitution since the war, that aboli.shing 
the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting, only 61 per cent, of 
those voting for Governor voted on the amendment. 

Never before has any question submitted to the people 
of Massachusetts received so overwhelming a defeat. The vote 
of the men was, “No,” 186,976; “Yes,” 87,000; a “No” 
majority of 99,976, only 24 short of a round 100,000. The 
vote in 1889 on the prohibition amendment to the constitution 
was, “No,” 131,062; “Yes,” 85,242; a “No” majority of 
45,820. So that the majority against woman suffrage in Mass¬ 
achusetts is more than twice as great as that against prohibition. 

The vote of the women on the suffrage question—“Yes,” 
22,204; “No,” 864—is as significant as that of the men. By 
the census of 1895 the number of men in Massachusetts quali- 
• fied to register and vote on this question is 561,699. The number 
of women qualified to register and vote on this question was at 
least 575,000. Of these more than 550,000 declined to vote, 
and less than four in a hundred voted “Yes,” in other words, 
more than 96 per cent, of the women of the commonwealth 
either prefer the present status of the suffrage, or are wholly 
indifferent in the matter. 

In 47 towns not one woman voted “Yes,” and in 138 
other towns the women votifig “Yes” numbered 15 or less. As 
the vast majority of the women opposed to the suffrage expres.sed 
their opinion by refusing to vote, the women’s vote, for the 
purpose of tabulation, has little value. In the following state¬ 
ment of votes, therefore, the votes of the men alone are 
considered, 


Massachusetts has 31 cities and 322 towns. Of the 31 
cities, every one cast a large majority against women suffrage. 
The vote of the cities was, ‘ No,” 120,657, “Yes” 54,012: a 
“No” majority of 66,645. Many people have thought that 
the vote against woman suffrage was disproportionately heavy 
in the cities, but this is not so. The vote of the 322 towns was 
“No” 66,319, “Yes” 32,988; a “No” majority of 33,331. 
The cities of Massachusetts contain two-thirds of the popu¬ 
lation of the state, and in an even distribution of sentiment, 
should therefore contribute two-thirds of the “No” majority. 
That is what they have done, and the closeness of the figures 
to an exact two-thirds is remarkable. Of the 322 towns, 293 
voted “No,” 28 voted “Yes,” and one was a tie. The 28 
towns voting “Yes” were among the very smallest in the 
state, their vote averaging only “Yes” 51, “No” 42. Every 
county and every Congressional, councillor, senatorial and 
representative district in the commonwealth cast a majority 
against the proposition. 

In view of such a result it would seem that further 
agitation of the question at present is uncalled for. For the 
executive committee 

FRANCIS C. EOWKEL, Chairman. 

CHARLES R. SAUNDERS, Secretary. 

Boston, Dec. 4, 1895. 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 
13 Elk Street, Albany, N. Y. 


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The Wrong of Suffrage. 


By Heloise Jamison. 


From an Article in the American Womayi's Journal for May, 1894 , 

The brave and .steady old-time defenders of woman’s enfranchi.sement 
have added little to their argument for thirty years. In one or another 
of its bearings, taxation without representation was the basis and almost 
the extent of their reason for believing that the ballot should be granted 
to them. The later and more scientific trend of thought is seen in the 
method used by the new converts to the doctrine. The early suffragist 
said: Alen alone make the laws for men and women. We want a voice 

in decisions on our own property.” ” We are classed by the State with 
minors and incompetents—criminals, paupers, idiots and women ; these 
are the excluded classes. We want that changed.” The purification of 
politics was much dwelt upon. The argument that citizenship involved 
military, jury and police duty, was met by the statement that not all men 
served in any of those capacities, and that the suggestion that such service 
was involved in the vote was a mere bugbear. To the argument that fam¬ 
ily life would be disturbed, it was answered that if religious differences 
had not served to sever domestic relations, political ones would not. As 
to office-holding, also, they held that, as injustice was done in the with¬ 
holding of the ballot, if that wrong were righted, adjustment would 
follow properly in regard to that and to other questions. 

The modern recruits to the cause are nothing if not speculative. 
They treat the theme philosophicall3^ They cast a broad glance over 
the ages, note the development of the race, and pause at the cradle of 
Christ to point out the human mother of Divinity as the type of a new 
life for the free woman. They talk of France and Hngland, and .sa}^ that 
broadening of law has been in direct proportion to the enfranchisement of 
man; that organization and trades-unionism would have no power were it 
not for the ballot. They say that the most perfect organization—that 
which has long existed in this country in educational matters, for instance 
—has not benefited the standing of woman teachers in regard to compen¬ 
sation; that busine.ss women and working girls maj^ form themselves into 
protective companies until doomsday, but without the ballot their appeals 
are lost. They talk of labor in new terms, and predict that the time is 
near when 7 iot to add to the store of values by effort of the hand or brain 
will be a disgrace. These new apostles of an old creed present glowing 
pictures of the progress of women in the latter half of the present century. 
They point to her kindergartens, her colleges, her clubs, her investments, 
her accumulations of money and her hospitals, extol her physicians, her 
lawj'ers, her clergymen, her novelists, her poets, her painters, her 
musicians, her actors, her vocalists. They recall the fact that for the first 
time in our nation’s life the government, as such, has recognized woman 
in aPDointine a Board of T^adv Manacrers fnr the Wnrld’c; Onhimbian 




Exposition, and that that board was able to find, in the work of woman 
architects and decorators, something worthy a place in the glorious pageant 
which revealed the intellectual, material and moral greatness of our land. 
There they pause and say : “After this, the ballot. The suffrage movement 
is not revolution, it is evolution. These are the steps thus far, the next is 
forward to political enfranchisement.” They then pass from the path of 
accomplishment and enter again the field of speculation. They predict 
that with the power to vote will come the power to reform law, to com¬ 
mand higher wages, to win greater respect for their opinions. They no 
longer inveigh against man as their enemy, but they would fain be his 
ally in making civilization effective in all its possible results. Their aim 
certainly is worthy of regard ; is their reasoning true ? 

First as to the easy, simple thesis; “There should be no taxation 
without representation.” That seems founded in a reality, and the ques¬ 
tion is : What is taxation and what is representation ? Taxation is the 
charge made for the support of organized society, and representation is 
the utterance used in guiding the government that is the formulated 
expression of that organized society. That leads us back to the question : 
How came there to be a government ? When and how did society agree 
to be represented and to be taxed ? The awful story of history, from the 
record of the slaying of Abel to that of the slaughter of half a million 
men in the war of secession, is the answer. It never did agree ; it has 
not yet agreed. The struggle of civilization is the effort to make it agree. 
Implanted in the bosom of man by his Maker is the belief in his individual 
freedom—of worship as concerns that Maker, of protection as concerns 
man. Side by side with that was implanted the principle of surrender of 
that freedom for just cause. Progress, or evolution, has been the devel¬ 
opment of these contending principles, the learning of the just cause for 
the maintenance and the surrender of individual freedom. There came a 
time when men said, “Let us use arguments instead of force, words 
instead of blows, in these decisions,” and some form of vote was instituted. 
With this they fought and voted by turns, as they set up or knocked 
down emperors, kings, popes and presidents. The so-called right of 
suffrage, the ability to vote, was the right that belonged to a man, not as 
a member of the human family, but as a fighter who believed in self¬ 
surrender for the good of organized society, and as the self-surrender 
principle gained ground could contend for it by force against the principle 
of individual freedom. War has been changed by progress, because man 
has changed, but brute force to drive home the truths gained daily on the 
moral battlefield is still the power behind the throne of the national con¬ 
science even in this enlightened land. 

If we consider the subject of woman suffrage at all, we must consider 
it in the light of this tremendous fact. The ballot and the bullet are not 
only convertible terms, but they are different modes of expressing the 
same thing. To be a citizen is to be a possible soldier. There is no way 
of fulfilling the moral part of the duty and leaving unfulfilled the physical. 
It is cowardly to attempt it. The question comes next, would military 


: _.. 


Ti /tm r __ 


TTT 1 1 


than half the population in many places, a large portion of it in all. 
Certainly, nurses could go to the battlefield all the more advantageously 
if they were uniformed and paid by government; and women surgeons, 
physicians, commissary officers could do effective work only as they were 
recognized portions of an army. The navy, too, would need such 
service. This would involve institutions for training government nurses 
and physicians. But it is puerile to suppose that military service could 
stop with nursing or catering. Do women intend to demand citizenship, 
and then shirk the utmost that it involves? Something has been said 
about chivalry ; that men would never wish to see women made soldiers. 
The movement is not a claim for chivalrous treatment, but for equal 
rights. Equal rights thej^ demand and should wish to receive. Their 
husbands and brothers go to war in the ranks, or are summoned to 
subdue a mob. Shall the wives and sisters who have equal vote in sending 
them not have equal duty ? Before the law there could and should be no 
distinction on account of race, sex, or previous condition of servitude. 
The same is true of jury and police duty. It is only the protected classes 
that have a right to demand release. That suggests another long cry of the 
advocates of suffrage—the classification of non-voters ; criminals, paupers, 
idiots and women. At the Columbian Exposition they exhibited a picture 
of the fine face of Frances Willard surrounded by the ideal countenances 
of the classes named, as an object lesson in the degradation of woman. 
What did it really represent ? The fact that in this conflict of the ages, even 
in the brutal past, man has guarded the non-combatants with sacred care. 
They were together as the babe and the grandsire are together, that they 
might be fought for and not fight. While the unfortunates of the race 
demand only care and pity, they, the women, were all that made it worth 
while to fight at all. As mothers, they were reverenced ; as sisters, they 
were to be kept from evil hands ; as sweethearts and wives, they were to 
cheer the battle, and inspire to victory. They were the meaning and the 
moral of the social system; and if they fail now to believe in that inter¬ 
pretation of their grouping before the law, woe betide the criminal, the 
pauper and the idiot. Woman’s chance of saving, elevating, caring for 
them lies in staying with them behind the barrier that love has raised. 
Her chance of protecting herself and man is to go with him to the edge 
of battle, pray for him in the needs-must of public duty, be the incentive 
for his return, and the reward of his hard endeavor. If this is degradation, 
will it be removed by the ballot ? What moral greatness can she not 
attain to^without that, and what will be gained by her subjection to the 
one condition imposed by it alone ? 

That leads to the direct consideration of the question of the purification 
of politics through the votes of women. The arguments that favor her 
possession of the suffrage say that she will, by her very nature, favor good 
causes, which will therefore gain great strength, while the contrary arguers 
urge that she would be politically more easily duped than men. It is held 
that one advantage would be that as women attend more to the duties laid 
upon them than men do, and are more zealous, there would be fewer 
indifferent voters in either sex if they were a spur in the sides of public 


These questions take up the subject where it is usually discussed— 
not as broadly related to the facts of history, but as a matter of present 
expediency; not as a principle but as a dogma. Tet us look at it, there¬ 
fore, purely as a moral question. Supposing a government could be 
formed by consent of the governed which should not rest on force ; how 
then would it be, taking all other questions as they are? Here let us 
consider the attitude of the new reformers—the scientific attitude. 

In discussion of the theory of evolution, pure and simple, the exponents 
of the doctrine come, now and then, to what may be called, in geological 
parlance, faults. They evolve a whole series of facts, and then skip one 
that they cannot evolve, in order to go on evolving beyond the chasm. In 
much the same spirit, though with few facts of experience to evolve from, 
the new leaders are now discussing suffrage. What proof have they that 
out of the voting power alone can come industrial liberty ? What proof 
do they show that the payment of higher wages to men results solely 
from their possession of the ballot ? What evidence have they that only 
the strikes of voters can succeed ? Strikes of the non-voters in our 
kitchens have long been successful. How can they support their affirmation 
that organizations of working women have been ineffective because their 
members cannot vote? The marvellous moral, intellectual, commercial 
progress which they depict as already accomplished by woman they talk 
of as the stepping-stone to the ballot; but they skip the necessary evolu¬ 
tionary statement as to how she attained thus far without the ballot, and 
why she cannot go on attaining ad infinitum without it still. Will any 
defender of the cause assert that progress will stop if the ballot is not 
given, if even it is shown that it is not wanted ? 

Has there not been confusion of terms? Would it not be nearer the 
truth, and more clear in its suggestion, if we spoke of the duty, not the 
right, of suffrage? 

Woman’s place is in the forefront of life, that of the family and of 
the nation. The destiny of the race is in her hands. God and man have 
placed it there, and it is in no spirit of self praise or gratulation that she 
must carry on what is, after all these ages, but just begun. Every power 
in her must awake; she will decide what public work is consistent with 
this final duty and what is not. Chivalry is no myth of the middle ages, 
but a truth of the century about to dawn. The names of mother, wife, 
sister, must not become the foot-ball of sentiment-mongers or of mistaken 
realists in thought. If the ballot would be a hindrance, w,e must have 
none of it. Influence we are fast attaining—shall we endanger it ? What 
law is there that we could not have to-day for an intelligent and united 
asking? I fear that we could have even the wrong of suffrage, so great is 
the confidence reposed in us. Let us realize our true position, and know 
that the advantage may be, and was meant to be, all with us. That man 
has taken, and meant to take, the brunt of the world’s work, that we, in 
time, might have opportunity to carve out for ourselves and for him, all 
that in us lies, all the possibilities of life for both. Eet us remember and 
the fart that we have the rip'llt not to vote. 


VIEWS ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


Reasons Given by Three Eminent Persons Why 
Women Should Not Vote. 


Herbert Spencer’s position on woman suffrage. 

Herbert Spencer in “Justice” maintains that there 
are fundamental reasons for keeping the spheres of the sexes 
distinct. He had formerly argued the matter “from the 
point of view of a general principal of individual rights,” 
but he finds that this cannot be sustained as he ‘ ‘discovers 
mental and emotional differences between the sexes which 
disqualif}’ women for the burdens of government and the 
exercise of its functions.” 

Extract from a letter from Bishop John H. Vincent, 
the founder of Chautauqua, on woman suffrage. 

“When about 30 years of age, I accepted, for a time, 
the doctrine of woman suffrage, and publicly defended it. 
Years of wide and careful observation have convinced me 
that the demand for woman suffrage in America is without 
foundation in equity, and, if successful, must prove harm¬ 
ful to American society. I find some worthy women defend¬ 
ing it, but the majority of our best women, especially our 
most intelligent, domestic and godly mothers, neither ask 




for nor desire it. The curse of America to-day is the domin¬ 
ated partisan vote—the vote of ignorance and superstition, 
shall we help matters by doubling this dangerous mass ? 
Free from the direct complications and passions of the polit¬ 
ical arena, the best woman may exert a conservative and 
moral influence over men as voters. Force her down into 
the same bad atmosphere, and both man and woman must 
inevitably suffer incalculable loss. We know what women 
can be in the commune, in riots, and on the rostrum. 

Women can, through the votes of men, have every 
right to which she is entitled. All she has, man has gladly 
given her. It is his glory to represent her. To rob him of 
this right is to weaken both. He and she are just now in 
danger through his mistaken courtesy.” 

Views of John Bright on woman suffrage. 

John Bright, the patriot, the tried and valued friend 
of every movement for the general benefit of woman, accus¬ 
tomed to equality of women in Friends’ meetings, was one 
of those who on May 20, 1867, voted in favor of Mr. Mill’s 
amendment to strike out of a reform bill the word “man-,” 
and insert the word “person.” Nine years afterwords, in 
March, 1876, he spoke against the enfranchisement of women. 
When charged with having changed his opinions, he said 
that he gave Mr. Mill the benefit of the doubt, and sympa¬ 
thized with him in a courageous stand, and in a letter pub¬ 
lished in “The Woman Question in Europe,” by Theodore 
Stanton, he wrote : 

“I cannot give you all the reasons for the view I take, 
but I act from the belief that to introduce women into the 
strife of political life would be a great evil to them, and that 


to our own sex no possible good could arise. When women 
are not safe under the charge or care of fathers, husbands, 
brothers and sons, it is the fault of our non-civilization, and 
not of our laws. ■ As civilization founded on Christian 
principles advances, women will gain all that is right for 
them to have, though they are not seen contending in the 
strife of political parties.” 

To this he adds personal testimony : 

“In my experience I have observed evil results to 
many w^omen who have entered hotly into political conflicts 
and discussion. I would save them from itA’^ 

Officers of the Anti-Suffrage Association of the 3rd 
Judicial District of the State of New York : 

Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, 

President. 

Mrs. W1LI.1AM J. WAI.LACK, 

ist Vice-Preside 7 it. 

Mrs. Wm. Bayard Van Rknssedakr, 

Secretary. 

Mrs. Joseph Gavit, 

Treasurer. 

Mrs. W. Winseow Cranneee, 

Chairman. 

Mrs. Erastus Corning, 

Mrs. Wieeiam Cassidy, 

Mrs. j. Howard King, 

Mrs. Joee R. Reed, 

Mrs. Wm. O. Stieeman, 

Mrs. Frederick Townsend, 

Miss Eucy A. Peympton, 

Executive Comynittee. 

Apply for more papers to Anti-Suffrage Association, 
13 Elk Street, Albany, N. Y. 


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Committee on Protest against Woman Suffrage. 


WHAT GOOD WILT SUFFRAGE DO THEM ? 

Women interested in the suffrage question frequently 
find among those who have signed the petition asking for 
the suffrage, many who will say, “/ did not want it for 
myself. I signed it for the sake of women less happy than 
I, less prosperous than I, for the working women, etc.” If 
such a one has found out for herself by personal effort in 
investigation, or by study, or upon reliable authority that 
the working women do both need and wish the ballot, she 
may be justified in signing her name as she did. But if she 
has done it upon mere hearsay, or upon acceptance of float¬ 
ing opinion sentimentally held, or with a vague sense that 
she may be helping someone, somehow, somewhere, sometime, 
is she not taking a grave responsibility upon herself, this of 
trying to do something for others when she is not definitely 
and specifically convinced that it will be what these others 
need ? Many working women, it is true, have been told 
that the ballot will bring them better wages, protection 
against the brutality of men, and the sure sympathy and 
protection of womem themselves. But is this true t Does a 
thoughtful woman believe that these changes can be brought 
about ” in a mechanical sort of a way ?’ ’ Must not an im¬ 
provement in wages come about ‘ ‘ through social and indus¬ 
trial changes, ” and not by legislative enactment?” There 
is a noble society in New' York, the “Working-Women’s 


Protective Union,” its object being ‘‘especially to provide 
women with legal protection from the frauds and impositions 
of unscrupulous employers.” Let me quote from an address 
by Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, published in the last report of 
this Union : 

‘ ‘ There is another mission which this society per¬ 
forms, and that is in procuring employment. There are one 
hundred thousand working-women in this city, and they get, 
on an average, only about two or three dollars a week, and 
they have no other means of support. For two thousand 
years Christianity has been endeavoring to ameliorate and 
elevate the condition of women. Among savages they are 
beasts of burden ; among barbarians and Mohammedans they 
are toys and slaves ; but amo 7 ig us, nothwithstanding that my 
friends the Women’s Suffrage Association have not got all 
they wanted, woman has every right that man has, and 
every privilege except the right to vote, and the right to zwte 
u’ould 7 iot her in just the things that we are looking 

after to-night.” That is to say, does not Dr. Depew say 
that the right to vote is not what women need to procure 
them better paid employment and justice at the hands of their 
employers? And as to this latter subject. Dr. Depew says : 

‘ ‘ But it is not alone 77 ie 7 i who do these acts of fraud and 
injustice. It is one of those anomalies that I have never 
been able to account for, that women are more cruel to each 
other than men are to them ; and among the worse oppres¬ 
sors, as I learn from the records of this society, of the poor 
women of New York are the women employers who have 
tho.se great fashionable establLshments where dresses, cloaks 
and hats are made.” 


And upon the same subject, I quote from the address 
of Mr. Frederic R. Coudert at an anniversary of this same 
protective union : 

“ The laws are all right; you can’t find any fault with 
those, so far as equality is concerned. What you want is 
sympathy ; and, hard as it may seem, it is not always the 
sister that gives this sympathy to the sufferer ; it is more 
frequently the brother that gives it; and when it comes to 
making the hard bargain with the woman, commend me to 
the economical and fur-clad lady, who is thrifty in saving six¬ 
pences. ’ ’ 

(Signed,) 

PROTESTANT. 


Ai^bany, N. Y., May, 1894. 

Papers and pamphlets can be obtained,^ ana Frotest 
signed at Headquarters Anti-Suffrage, 7^ l^^rl Street, 

ground floor, under the Kenmore 


/ 





Why Women Do Not Want to Vote. 


Talk to Legislators by a Tax-Paying Woman 
Not New and Not Strenuous. 


The Best Albany Has Heard Against Woman Suffrage. 


Reason for Contentment. 


Business Never Entrusted by One Woman to Another. 

The Slander Upon Men Who Are Ridiculed 
FOR What They Do for Women. 

(From the New York Post, March 8, 190^) 

Nothing has come from the Judiciary Assembly Committee this 
morning of the proposal to grant taxpaying women in third-class 
cities the right to vote at special tax elections. It was put fairly 
and hard on behalf of women who, do not want the suffrage, and 
the committee had an hour’s hearing which stirred their interest and 
warmed their hearts as few hearings do. Last year the Woman’s 
Suffrage Association tried a long time in vain to have some one 
introduce the same measure, its chairman reporting: “ It was offered 
to a number of senators representing third-class cities or villages 
where taxpaying women vote, but it was ' I pray thee have me 
excused ’ with all of them, and the same spirit manifested itself in 
the Assembly, a most discouraging state of affairs.” It was neces¬ 
sary to wait for Senator Ambler (one of the eldest of the country 
legislators) to return from the South, and he secured the services 
of Assemblyman Bedell,” of railway grab fame, to introduce it in the 
Assembly. 

Yesterday’s hearing developed nothing much except clever and 
animated opposition, Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, a taxpayer, being 







2 


the speaker—a gentle woman of a by no means obsolete sort, who 
stood at the end of the table and gravely, amiably, with the pleasant 
fluster that might be expected, began by saying: This measure is 
not asked for by the taxpaying women or men of the cities which 
it affects. The lady who asked Senator Raines to introduce the 
bill lives in Geneva, where taxpaying womem now have the right to 
vote, through their charter. In fact, seventeen cities of the third- 
class have obtained the right in this way. Did the other cities which 
this bill affects, feel the need of, or even desire the extension of 
suffrage to its taxpaying women, they could easily secure an amend¬ 
ment to their respective charters, as the seventeen before-mentioned 
cities did.” 

The committeemen threw away their cigars. Mrs. Crannell 
went on: 

Is it not true that one reason why each city has its special char¬ 
ter, which may differ radically from that of any other, is that pro¬ 
visions quite necessary for one city would be useless, or worse than 
useless, in another? Four of the cities legislated for by this bill 
submit all questions of special appropriations to the Legislature, viz., 
Schenectady, Lockport, Dunkirk, and Auburn; and Ogdensburg 
submits to the Legislature all questions of bonding.” 

PRESENT CONDITIONS. 

She gave information as to present conditions in the State, saying: 

Four of the cities which come under the provisions of this bill, 
Clean, Oneida, New Rochelle and Fulton, provide that the husband, 
though he may not have any property in his own name, may vote 
upon taxpaying propositions if his wife is the owner of property. 
This is based on the theory that a large proportion of the property 
on which women are taxed is virtually the homestead, or property 
deeded them by their husbands to protect the family against possible 
loss through business ventures. 

'' What are you going to do with these nine of the fifteen cities 
legislated for in this bill? You either take away the husbands’ votes 
in the four cities I have spoken of, or you give those households 
two votes, for the bill provides: ' This act shall not be construed as 
abridging the right heretofore conferred upon any person to vote 
at such election.’ What are you going to do with the other third- 
class cities that have no tax elections, their Board of Estimate or 
Common Council deciding all questions? 

** There is much being said about ' home rule.’ Why abrogate it 
in a case like this? 


3 

'' Where it has seemed expedient to give to taxpaying women the. 
right to vote, it has been granted. If a resident of one of these 
fifteen cities desired to have its taxpaying women vote, it would only - 
be necessary for her to ask the senator or assemblyman representing, 
her city to introduce a bill providing for such an amendment to the 
city’s charter, and you, gentlemen, would act upon it, governed by 
the desire of the citizens of that city, for or against the amendment. 

“If it were shown to you, on the contrary, that there was no 
desire for, and no need of such an amendment on the part of its 
taxpayers, male and female, but that it was what the present bill is 
acknowledged to be by its inceptors, simply an entering wedge which 
shall in the fulness of time cleave its way to the root of our estab¬ 
lished laws and government, giving full suffrage to all women, 
regardless of property, education, morality, you would not report it, 
I am sure. And this is what we claim this bill to be.” 

By this time the committeemen, and those who had come to dis¬ 
cuss technical subjects of the workings of laws, had wheeled their 
chairs about, and clerks came from their work to stand and listen. 
The speaker continued, not in the snippy or severe or insinuating 
manner of the male attorney, or the positive get-off-the-track manner 
of the “ new woman,” but evenly, with the calm wisdom of fireside 
women to grown sons: 

KERNEL OF THE MATTER. 

“ Speaking of the discouragement in not having this bill reported 
last year, the woman suffragist said: ‘ While taxation without rep¬ 
resentation] is tyranny, legislation without representation is greater 
tyranny. Is not that the gist of the matter ? Why should one-half 
of the adult population of this State be governed by a male oligarchy, 
while women are concerned as deeply as men in the legislation that 
affects humanity ? ’ This is the kernel of this ‘ equitable measure.’ 
Not only is the woman taxpayer to vote, whether she wishes to or 
not, but women everywhere are to vote, and to hold office, that this 
' male oligarchy ’ shall no longer govern them or make laws for 
them. I do not believe that your committee would be more com¬ 
petent to discharge its duties properly if half of its members were 
women. But that is the ultimate aim of all the bills introduced by 
the Woman Suffrage Association. In Colorado, Utah, and Idaho 
women are elected to the Legislature, and serve on its committees. 
I leave it to the intelligence of any of you as to what conditions 
might, and probably would, prevail if this Senate and Assembly 
were a mixed body, a sort of co-legislative affair in which women 
and men participated. 

“ Under this bill the non-resident, who may be one of the largest 
taxpayers of the city, has no vote on taxpaying propositions. Cor- 


4 

porations pay large taxes, yet they have no vote. The minor may 
be taxed for years, yet he has no ‘ voice ’ nor ‘ representation.’ if 
this bill be urged as a matter of equity, why not incorporate in its 
provisions a vote for these disqualihed taxpayers? No such uni¬ 
versal maxim in morals or anything else ever prevailed, that every¬ 
body who pays taxes shall vote. I'he Declaration of Independence 
does not say that all men being born free and equal shall have a 
right to vote. 

“ It says that they have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness, and I leave it to any one if the women of America do 
not possess that right to its fullest extent. 

“ It is in order that they may enjoy these blessings that their 
property is taxed. The rentpayer and the purchaser are taxpayers, 
if the taxes on real estate be increased, the rent goes up, and the 
tenant pays the tax, indirectly; and the merchant governs his prices 
somewhat by the rental he pays. So that this bill discriminates 
unjustly. 

“ A few years ago the Legislature gave the taxpaying women of 
towns and villages the right to vote on taxpaying propositions. In 
very few instances have they exercised that right; but in one village, 
in which I am interested as a taxpayer, a proposition which all the 
large taxpayers deemed not only unnecessary, but unwise, was 
carried by the female relatives of the men who would profit by the 
employment the provision would afford! 

“ The taxpaying women of the cities, as a rule, do not want to 
vote. They do not, in the majority of cases, take an active interest 
in municipal affairs, such as the laying out of a new street, the 
construction of a system of water pipes, of sewerage, electric wires, 
fire and police departments, providing for schools and the poor, for 
streets and public buildings. So long as only taxpaying men vote 
on such propositions, it is absurd to intimate that there has been, 
or ever will be, a discrimination against taxpaying women. No man 
will vote to increase his tax in order to oppress some taxpaying 
woman. 

‘‘ Women are interested sufficiently to wish all these material 
things, so they pay their taxes willingly for the protection to life 
and property, and for the comforts this tax provides; but they leave 
to men, whose business training and experience fit them for it, the 
practical solution of the government of a corporation, and the 
details consequent upon the proper adjustment of expenditures, and 
benefits received therefrom, incidentally allowing the men to stand 
between them and the enforcement of the laws, where necessary, on 
the principle that, with the ballot, there is a duty, a service-tax, that 
no man may deny. For his money-tax he gets all the things women 
get, no more, no less; for his service-tax he gets the ballot, behind 
which may lie the bullet. 


5 

“ Have you ever heard of an instance where the business manage¬ 
ment of a great estate was placed in the hands of women by women ? 
In Albany there are five banks that have been in existence nearly 
one hundred years. Of the five hundred stockholders, two hundred 
and thirty are women; yet, I am told, no woman has ever entered 
one of them to cast her vote for the officers who are to have charge 
of her property. It is so unusual as to be of note for a woman to 
name a woman as executrix of her will. The husband may name 
his wife, with the cooperation of some man, but that a woman ever 
gave the disposal of her property into the hands of other women is 
open to doubt. And yet, the claim is made that the practical busi¬ 
ness aflPairs of cities would be better administered if women voted, 
and that taxpaying women need the ballot to protect themselves! 

“ Isn’t that a slander upon the men of America, who have made 
the women of this country the envy of all other nations? 

CONSERVATISM AND PATRIOTISM. 

“ Speaker Nixon is reported as saying that women are ' conserva¬ 
tive, considerate, patriotic, and intelligent.’ It is this sort of com¬ 
plimentary chivalry that the ‘ conservative ’ women are afraid of. 
We do not want you to give us the ballot because women are all 
conservative—for they are not. If they were I should not have to 
appear before you to-day; nor because they are all considerate, 
patriotic, intelligent, for with all d'ue deference to Speaker Nixon’s 
knowledge of women, I must regretfully say they are not. But even 
if they were conservative, considerate, patriotic, and intelligent, 
what would that have to do with this bill, that provides for the 
changing of the charters of fifteen cities, granting special privileges 
to the woman who has property, against the woman who has none ? ” 

Then came this feminine anecdote: 

“ Two women who were neighbors and friends in the East, with 
their husbands, crossed the plains and built themselves houses in 
Colorado. One man was a Republican, the other was a Democrat, 
yet they had lived side by side in the East and in the West for nearly 
half a century without a dispute. Then suffrage was granted to 
women, and these two conservative, considerate, patriotic, and intelli¬ 
gent women joined each her husband’s party, quarreled over their 
political differences, and have not spoken to each other for two 
years! In Wyoming one man said: ‘ If I find the women of my 
family are not going to vote as I want them to, I hitch up my team 
and drive out the side gate early in the morning; and as it is nearly 
fifteen miles to the polls from my house, they generally don’t get 
there to vote.’ 

'' And now, gentlemen, I am asked to say by many women of 
third-class cities that when they want to vote they will not ask the 


suffragists to petition for them; they will ask their husbands, 
fathers, brothers, and you will be asked to amend their charters 
respectively, and not in a bunch, without regard to conditions pre¬ 
vailing in the different cities, or possible evils wrought by such 
action. We ask you, therefore, until such time arrives, to not report 
this bill ” 

Mrs. Crannell reached for her coat and was helped on with it, 
and walked out amid such applause as you do not hear often in 
committee rooms. What she said is given here at length because 
it is unusual, and an expression from the side of a question which 
seldom is heard outside the homes of the land. 

Officers of the Anti-Suffrage Association of the Third Judicial 
District, State of New York: Headquarters at Albany, N. Y. 

Mrs. J. V. L. PRUYN, Honorary President. 

MRS. WILLIAM J. Wallace, President. 

MRS. Wm. Bayard Van Rensselaer, Secretary, 

MRS. Joseph GAVIT, Treasurer. 

Executive Committee. 

Mrs. W. Winslow crannell. Chairman. 

MRS. J. HOWARD KING, 

MRS. JOEL R. REED, 

MRS. WM. O. Stillman, 

MRS. Frederick Townsend, 

MISS Lucy a. plympton. 








When Lovely Woman Stoops to Politics 

Her Methods So Up-to-Date that the Male Graduate 
OF THE “Practical” School Can Learn From Her. 

Testimony in the Case of Representative Shafroth of 
Colorado, who Resigned His Seat. 

Shows that She Drilled Repeaters of Her Own Sex. 

Stuffed Ballot Boxes and Easily Bluffed “Mere Man.” 


\_From the New York Times. Febr^iary 21^ 

When lovely woman stoops to politics she can give man points 
on fraudulent elections. The testimony in the case of Repre¬ 
sentative Shafroth of Colorado, who resigned his seat the other 
day because he was convinced that he had been fraudulently 
elected, is largely a story of woman suffrage. Women vote in 
Colorado, and the part played by voters of the gentler sex in the 
Denver election of 1902 is full of suggestion about the purifying 
influence exerted on politics by them. 

According to this Shafroth testimony, the fair voters not only 
voted fraudulently, but stuffed ballot boxes, bought votes, and 
otherwise ran the election in a most up-to-date manner. It is 
also shown, as bearing somewhat upon the elevating influence of 
wmman in politics, that the masculine allies of these female re¬ 
peaters bulldozed and assaulted women election oflicials and 
prevented wmmen from voting by making at the polling places 
scenes which no respectable woman would care to enjoy long. 

The Democrats had control of the election machinery and 
committed the frauds. A young woman named Alma Beswick 
seems to have been the head of the ballot-box stufiing and re¬ 
peating end of the conspiracy. Her name constantly reappears 
in the testimony, and she seems to be a young woman of great 
industry and ingenuity and remarkable aptitude for politics. 
The only hint of her appearance in the evidence is given by a 
witness wdio says that she is '' dark complected.^' 






2 

Here is the experience of a woman voter and her husband, 
shedding some light on the question how women are treated at 
the polls under woman suffrage. The witness, Edwin V. Brake,, 
describes how a man named Owens and his wife came to regis¬ 
ter. They stood from an hour to an hour and a half up next 
the clerk,” says Brake, and the lady was very courteous and 
nice, and requested three or four different times to be allowed 
to register. People were repeatedly put in front of them and 
they were crowded put. They would be up next the railing; 
they would be crowded back; two or three people would step in 
front of them. Finally they got mad and went out.” 

Here is Brake’s description of the beautiful effrontery with 
which the women voters used the registry books: I could not 
get the names of three women that I saw register three times 
without leaving the room. I could not get the names because 
they would not let us get the names. They registered them 
twice before Len Rogers, and the third time they went over to 
the other side to the other clerk.” 

The duties of a woman worker seem to be extensive in Denver. 
Joseph F. Maxwell testified that a number of women were put 
on the rolls who did not register and were not residents, one of 
whom, Alice Hitt, was a girl only seventeen years old.” Being 
asked who vouched for the names when they were put on the 
rolls he said: 

“ Miss Alice Donovan, who has been a prominent Democratic 
worker in that precinct for years. She has been Democratic 
judge. Democratic clerk.” 

Market Price op Women^s Votes. 

Maxwell said he discovered a woman voting in one polling- 
place under the name of Mary O’Leary and in another as Mary 
C. Bates. He arrested her, and she made a confession which 
shows that the market rate for women’s votes was |1. This 
woman, whose real name was Harriet Hibbard, and her 
daughter, were hired by Mary Crilley as repeaters at that rate. 

. The sort of experience good women had to undergo at the 
polls is illustrated in the testimony of A. Newton Patton. He 
brought two girls named Baker, both Republicans, to the polling 


place to register, 
able to be about. 


3 

One of them had been ill and was only jusi 


The Misses Baker took their places in line and Patton stood 
talking to friends for twenty minutes. Then his attention was 
called to the fact that there were as many people ahead of the 
Bakers as there had been at the outset. “Billy'' Green, a 
Democratic worker, was crowding people in ahead of the two 
girls. Patton stepped up to the counter and told.the clerks that 
one of the Misses Baker was ill, and that he did not think it right 
to put late comers in ahead of her. 

Green called Patton a name which he would not repeat in his 
testimony and told him to get out. Seeing that the sick girl was 
becoming nervous at the prospect of a fight, Patton swallowed 
his anger and stepped back. In fifteen minutes, the girls still 
being as far as ever from the counter, one of them*beckoned Pat¬ 
ton over and said that her sister was so ill that she did not think 
they could wait. Green again ordered him back. At the end of 
an hour one of the Baker girls succeeded in getting to the 
counter, and called Patton to vouch for her* according to law. 

Green then used “ language too indecent to be used in any 
place on earth," and told Patton he could not vouch for any¬ 
body. “The names that he used and the profanity in the 
presence of the women I will not repeat," Green then called 
on some tramps to throw^ Patton out. 

“ I replied," says Patton, “that one of those w omen was very 
sick, and that I would go in order to avoid trouble." 

But they fell on him and threw him out. Green putting his 
hand on a revolver. The object of the demonstration, of course, 
was to drive the Baker girls away, and it succeeded. He found 
them in the street, and tried to get them to go back and register. 
“They said that they did not want to endanger their lives by 
going into such a place again, and all my persuasion would not 
induce them to do so." 

Another illustration of the way in which voting was made 
pleasant for refined women was given in the testimony of 
Thomas Clarke that a polling place w^as established in a dis¬ 
orderly house. 


4 

No doubt many of the repeaters were w^omen of the lowest 
class, but not all of them. Witness the testimony of George 
P. Costigan, Jr., w^ho had been telling about two women repeat¬ 
ers: 

Q. Did they look like respectable w’omen? A. Yes, these tw^o 
were. 

WoMAN^s Clever Trick. 

A pleasanter side of women’s aptitude for politics is given in 
the testimony of Mrs. Mary McGrath, a Republican who discov¬ 
ered a way to beat the registration frauds. She took a number 
of Republican women to register, but the clerks would not allow 
them to do so. Mrs. McGrath was beaten for a while, but pres¬ 
ently she noticed that some men who w^ore buttons bearing the 
name of Stimpson, the Democratic candidate for Governor, were 
promptly registered. “ I spoke to Mrs. Ashworth about it, and 
I said, ^ Well, if we had a Stimpson button we would get regis¬ 
tered, too, and get waited on in time.’ So I got a lot of Stimpson 
buttons, and we told the women we would not go up with them 
any more, but gave them the buttons and they w^ent to Demo¬ 
cratic headquarters, and they got vouchers for them there and 
had them registered at once.” 

Yet this natural-born politician said on cross-examination: 

Q. You are a Republican? A. I have always voted that 
ticket, because my husband w^as a Republican; but I don’t know 
anything about politics. 

This same Mrs. McGrath detected a number of women repeat¬ 
ers, and gave a thoroughly feminine description of one of them: 

She didn’t have no headdress on her head, and had such lovely 
hair that it attracted my attention. It was auburn, with a 
large purple bow on top of it, and that was very attractive.” 

James H. Pershing, one of the Republican candidates, saw a 
carriage driven by a Democratic politician named Bramer and 
containing four women. Bramer drove to each polling place, ana 
the w^omen would get out and vote, re-enter the carriage, and 
drive to the next. When Bramer noticed that he was being 
followed he and some other Democrats held Pershing’s horses 
and kept him a prisoner 'svhile the carriage drove on. Bramer’s 


5 

indignation at being followed was characterized by one deli¬ 
cious picture of woman suffrage in operation: 

“ They said/^ testifies Pershing, “ that this following their 
carriage w^ould haA'e to stop. Mr. Bramer said his wife was 
in that carriage, and that he didn^t propose to have her followed 
by another man.” 

Some Republicans interfered and the injured husband 
knocked one of them down and tried to shoot him. 

But the testimony of Mrs. Beatrice Muhlemann is the prettiest 
thing in the two big volumes of evidence. She was a member 
of the ballot-box stuffing conspiracy; but some of the Democrats 
testified that she was a Republican spy. On Saturday before 
election Frank J. Medina took her into a hotel room, locked the 
door, and asked her if she would work for him fixing up ballots 
and getting out repeaters.” The price agreed on was |100, and 
he paid her |50 down. 

On Sunday Mrs. Muhlemann, with the industrious Alma Bes- 
wick and George S. Granger, a Democratic election judge, went 
to a place on California street, wh^re they found the ballot box. 
On the lounge was a package of ballots tied and sealed. 
Granger and Miss Beswick, after locking the door, opened this 
package and took out 125 ballots. With these, “ a bottle of ink, 
a bottle of mucilage, and a few pens,” they went to the St. 
Nicholas Hotel and Miss Beswick took a room. When they got 
in “ Miss Beswick locked the door, the curtains or shades were 
drawn down tight, gas lighted, and then the bundle of ballots was 
opened by Granger. Then Granger said we should tear off the 
first or top perforated strip with the number on it of each bal¬ 
lot, and then we took off the second numbered perforated strip, 
and all the strips were laid on the back of a chair. After they 
were all off Mr. Granger put them all in his pocket except three, 
which I took unknown to him. 

‘‘ Then Miss Beswick said the ballots must be marked as she 
said. She took perhaps a third of the whole number, and she 
marked two with the word ‘ Republican ’ in the blank space at 
tlie top of the ballot where the voter is supposed to write the 
name of the ticket he votes; another ^ Old Soldiers,^ one ‘ Social¬ 
ist,’ one ‘ People’s Party,’ and one ‘ People’s Democrat.’ Then 


6 

we all three wrote in the rest of the 125 ballots in different 
styles of handwriting, writing the words ^ Democrat,^ 

^ Democratic,’ ^ Democracy,’ and ^ the Democratic ticket ’ in the 
blank space. I wrote two of the ballots with my left hand so 
as to disgoise my handwriting.” 

Instructing Women Kepeaters. 

Tht y numbered and folded the ballots, and each took charge 
of some of them. On Monday Miss Beswick came for Mrs. 
Muhlemann, and they drove around visiting the women who 
were to do repeating and giving them instructions. A Mrs. 
Pritchard joined the two w'omen, and they made the ballots 
correspond with the pollbooks, which they had. The Democratic 
clerk for the precinct, Johnnie Bremer, came in to get his or¬ 
ders from Miss Beswick. Miss Beswick’s last job that day was 
to arrange a scheme by which the Republican judge of election 
was to be ousted and a Democrat put in his place. Miss Beswick 
was to insist that Young, the Republican judge, go to the court¬ 
house to get a registration certificate. While he was gone she 
would elect Stodgedale, a Democrat, to his place, and when 
Yoving came back he would be kept outside the 25-foot limit. 
Granger reported to Miss Beswick, and that fertile worker told 
him she had arranged to have twenty-five men start a fight at 
the polling place in the course of which the Republican watchers 
and challengers were to be thrown out. 

Lucius W. Hoyt saw five girl repeaters go into the same poll¬ 
ing place and vote twice within ten minutes. Asked if they 
were disguised the second time, he said, Oh, no, the same dress 
exactly; they hadn’t changed it at all. It was a conspicuous 
dress ” Hoyt demanded their arrest, but was told to shut up; 
whereupon '' Bramer shook his fist at me and the girls made 
faces at me, and some other pleasantries of that sort.” 

The joyous informality of voting under woman suffrage w^as 
thus strikingly stated by Hoyt, his subject being a special con¬ 
stable named Maloney: 

I saw on one or two occasions wmmen apparently going by, 
and Mr. Maloney would run after them, stop them, have a rew 
minutes’ conversation with them, and they would come back and 


7 

vote. Apparently as they were going by they didn’t know the 
polling place was there, were going somewhere else, and they 
would turn around and come back after he spoke to them.” 

Samuel Wood said that that Alma Beswick brought in the 
w^omen, whom Hoyt followed, and one of them, Maria Dawson, 
voted five times. Miss Beswick also brought in a lot more, and 
she brought the hackful around that Pershing started to follow. 
Wood also said that many of these voters did not remember 
the names under which they were to vote, and Miss Beswick, in 
such cases, would announce their names for them. Ollie 
Vaughan, a girl that keeps a little restaurant,” also brought 
in squads of alleged repeaters. 

Miss Beswick’s ability was well known to her Republican op¬ 
ponents, and Wood said, “ I had heard the day before that she 
was sick, and she is a pretty good worker, and 1 was hoping she 
would stay sick for a day or two.” 

While w^omen repeaters, as already stated, got |1 per vote, 
$5 was paid to women not accustomed to this work, for a single 
vote. Mrs. Mary Aldrich testified that Benny Simon, a 
Democratic worker, offered her |5 to vote under the name of 
Margaret Cain, but she did not do it. 

Was Not Her Old Beau. 

Miss Sarah E. Stout was a Republican challenger, and her tes¬ 
timony sheds a delicious light on the human interest side of 
woman suffrage. A man came uj) and attempted to vote in the 
name of a person named Soco. Miss Stout challenged him as 
not being Soco at all. The judges were out of patience with her. 

Why do you challenge this man’s vote ? ” they demanded. 

Here you are making yourself ridiculous, challenging votes all 
day, and it doesn’t do you any good.” 

Mr. Soco used to be my beau,” was the crushing answer. 

This man I never saw before.” 

‘‘ The judges dropped their heads,” she adds, in her testimony. 
But they let the man vote. 

Miss Stout’s observations about the men who came in to vote 
under names they had not learned perfectly were acute and enter- 


8 

taining. She told about a man who came in to vote under the 
name of Stephen something. He was a mere boy, and he care¬ 
fully pronounced his name “ Step Hen.’’ 

She gave the Democrats a lot of trouble, and at last they 
resorted to violence. A man attempted to w^rest her book from 
her. ‘‘ I closed my book, put it down at my side, and he hit me 
on the other side opposite the book, threw me over against the 
wall and on the chair, and my book dropped at my side under 
me, and he grabbed hold of me, jerked me on the floor, then he 
grabbed my book and wrenched it from my hand, and hollered 
very loud. No one came to my assistance.” 

Her book was gone and she was helpless. She went home with 
a pain in her side and did not come back. So much for the puri¬ 
fying and elevating effect of woman in politics upon the chivalry 
of man. 

There was a Comstock that lived on Champa street,” says 
this acute witness, and they were going to have a man vote 
that name; and as the name was Priscilla, and it was a man 
who was trying to vote, they could not get it twisted around 
right; so they told him his name had been voted and he could 
not vote, and he left.” 

Another delightful picture of woman exercising the franchise 
is contributed by William H. Medaris: 

‘‘A lady went to vote. She wanted to vote a McKinley ticket. 
They told her there was no McKinley ticket. She says, I want 
to vote the Koosevelt ticket. They said there is no Koosevelt 
Ticket. So after she had gone the judges said, ‘ Well, we beat you 
out of one good Republican vote there.’ ” 

When Unlucky Man Intervened. 

At one polling place Mrs. Jane Warns, the Republican judge, 
appointed Mrs. Lila Fierstone as her clerk. Mrs. Fierstone had 
come with her husband, a doctor, as escort. The Democratic 
judges, who had appointed their own clerks, told her she could 
not be a clerk. She insisted. The Democrats stood her off until 
the unlucky husband. Dr. Fierstone, was incautious enough to 
‘'butt in” with a suggestion that they look up the law. This 
interference of a man gave the Democrats their opportunity. 


9 

Dr. Fierstone went out on his head, losing the buttons olf his 
vest in the m^lde. This, of course, settled the question, and Mrs. 
Fierstone followed her husband home. 

The human interest side of woman suffrage is again indicated 
in the statement that Ernest Thompson took his sweetheart (now 
his wife) out of town on election day, and while they were gone 
two Democrats voted on their names. 

Mrs. Warns, as a Republican judge, had plenty of excitement 
after the Fierstones were routed. While the Democrats were 
dragging Mrs. Fierstone out by the arm after her husband, Mrs. 
Warns secured possession of her clerk’s book. “ When Lunney 
seen that I had my clerk’s book,” she says, he threw me over 
against the chair and stepped on my foot and smashed my toe all 
to pieces and jerked the book away from me and threw it over 
to this clerk, and Steck pushed me one way and he pushed me the 
other.” 

As this did not discourage her they resorted to getting between 
her and the book and crowding her into a corner when she tried 
to look at it. But she did her work somehow. They stole her 
poll book and her pad, but she got an old piece of cardboard and 
wrote on that. Then they abstracted her pencil, but she got n 
pen. 

8he caught one of the clerks altering the books and protested. 

Then he jumped up and cursed and swore around there—oh, it 
was just awful language he used.” After the ballots were counted 
she closed the box and prepared to lock it. “ Lunney jumps up 
and.tries to take my key away from me. He smashes my nose 
and bent my key almost double trying to get it away from me, 
but he didn’t get it. And he opened the box and sat down on top 
of it and I went home.” 

A woman who had been hustled out of a polling place by Billy 
Green came to George W. Gildersleeve and said she had been to 
a good many places, but that was the toughest place she had ever 
got into. 

Frederick T. Armstrong told how the Democrats forced unfor¬ 
tunate women to vote under other women’s names, under threats 
of arrest. One of these women, Alberta Curtis, could not be 
bulldozed, and when she got to the polling place insisted on 


10 

telling what her real name was and declared that she had not 
registered. 

John D. Fleming told how a Republican watcher named 
Hanson was thrown out by a policeman named Kennedy for 
challenging a repeater. Kennedy could hardly stand upon his 
feet, and he reeled back and explained^ ^ Because he was acting 
ondacent, Sergeant; because he was acting ondacent in the 
prisince of the lady.’ ” 

The only woman present was Rose Finnegan, the Democratic 
clerk. It will thus be observed that Republican watchers must 
be careful what they do in the presence of women in Denver. 

A colored woman named Mary Walker, who could not read, 
came to the polling place and fell into the clutches of the cele¬ 
brated Billy Green, who fixed her ballot for her. Her testimony 
is just a little bit pathetic: 

“ I told him 1 wanted to vote the Republican ticket. I asked 
the gentleman to get it down right; if he didn’t it would be a 
lie that he would never be forgiven for. That is just what I 
told him.” 


Officers of the Anti-Suffrage Association of the Third Judicial 
District, State of New York: 


Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, - Honorary President. 
Mrs. William J. Wallace, - President. 

Mrs. Wm. Bayard Van Rensselaer, Secretary. 
Mrs. Joseph Gavit, - - - Treasurer. 


Executive Committee. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, - Chaimnan. 
Mrs. j. Howard King, 

Mrs. Joel R. Reed, 

Mrs. Wm. O. Stillman, 

Mrs. Frederick Townsend, 

Miss Lucy A. Plympton. 





Why Suffrage would not help Women. 


“ E. S. C.” Thinks those Taxpayers would 
be worse off than now. 


To the Editor of the N'ew York Tribu 7 ie : 

When the colonie.s were taxed by the English Government 
without having representation in Parliament, and when they were 
not only taxed without representation of their community, but had 
special taxes imposed upon them which were not laid upon the people 
of England, they said justly : “ vSuch taxation without our being 
represented at all, without our needs, without our interests being 
represented in Parliament, is tyranny.” 

Our forefathers objected to the taxation because it was unjust. 
To-day, women who are clamoring for suffrage have taken up the 
axiom of our forebearers, and twisting it out of all recognition of its 
original meaning, have placed it on their banner as an incentive to 
strengthen their ranks. 

And who are the women who make all the hue and cry about 
want of ‘ ‘ representation ’ ’ by taxpaying women ? Are they the 
taxpayers? In very few instances. Should “representation” be 
claimed for all women because some women are taxed ? Will it 
benefit the taxpaying women to have “representation” when by 
gaining that “ representation ” she has put as much power into the 
hands of thomsands that will neutralize her ‘ ‘ representation ’ ’ ? 
To-day the man who holds taxable property, and who contributes 
largely to the public coffers, has no more voice as to the amount of 
money to be raised or its expenditure than the man who pays no 
taxes at all. The vote of the ignorant and debased has as much 
weight in determining the policy of the Government as that of the 
educated man, the man of business, or the man who has devoted his 
life to studying the problems of government. 





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The vote of the millionaire is worth no more than the vote 
of the pauper ; and as the percentage of women with taxable property 
is vastly less than those without, how will the taxed women be 
benefited, should woman suffrage obtain ? They will have nominal 
representation, but practically they will be more misrepresented than 
they are at present. Individuals have always had to submit to 
taxation without representation. The minority is alw^ays voiceless. 

A taxpaying woman said : “I live in a small town and pay large 
taxes ; next door to me is a man who pays very little. At every 
meeting called for ‘improvements,’ which means largely increased 
taxes for me, this man votes, and I have no voice. Is this right? ” 
She was asked if the man was married, and if he had daughters over 
twenty-one years of age. She replied that he had a wife and three 
daughters. When she was asked if she thought her condition as a 
taxpayer would be improved when, instead of one ‘ voice ’ against 
her interests, she had five, she confessed that she hadn’t thought of 
that. 

And that is the trouble ; women do not stop to think. They 
feel the injustice of a law that gives to the pauper the same right to 
impose obligations upon the property owner as that of the wealthy 
man himself, and they fail to see that the same conditions would 
prevail in an aggravated form if all women were permitted to vote, 
and they forget that the wealthy minor has no “ voice that the man 
who, living in one town, owns property in another, has no “ voice,” 
and that large corporations pay taxes but have no “ voice.” 

It is not, after all, so much a question of taxpaying women as it 
* is of a body of women who are constantly seeking some change in 
the existing condition of things, and who use this ” voiceless” cry, 
as we said before, as an incentive to other women. 

Taxpaying women do not care to vote. Many of them hold 
property in corporations, and they always place their proxy in the 
hand of some man to vote for them, or do not vote at all ; and this 
nullifies the assertion that taxation without representation is tyranny. 

AIvBANy, February 2p, i8g>6. E. S. C. 




Woman’s Demand for Suffrage 


Unwieldy Millions Already and Ignorance Sufficiently 

Cumbersome. 


To the Editor of the New York Thnes : 

A lady said to me a few days ago : “I am for equal suffrage ; 
I want my freedom, and I want to give my daughters their freedom.” 
‘‘Freedom from what?” I asked. The lady whom I asked had for¬ 
gotten to ask that of the suffragists whose special plea had subverted 
her common sense, and so she could not tell me. One of the favorite 
expressions of the suffrage leaders is that “women are slaves ;” and 
this in the face of the evidence that legally she has rights superior 
far to men ; that socially she has man at her feet in chivalric attitude ; 
that morally she is where she desires to be, above, or below. There 
is no legislation needful for her “ rights,” other than to give her 
suffrage. And to force her into the political arena ; to compel her to 
take up the burden of an active part in the responsibilities of the 
administration of government is not to give her freedom, but to 
curtail her liberty. 

We are struggling with hard times. Industries languish. Our 
farmers pile mortgages upon their lands ; and our merchants and 
bankers go into bankruptcy. Anarchy, like a venomous reptile, 
lifts its head amid the struggling masses, with a frenzied hiss. 
Everywhere wise men and women are asking what will be the end ? 
The cry goes up all over the land ; how shall we regain our prosperity? 
The answer varies as in the theatre at Ephesus, agreeing only in this 
that Congress must come to the Nation’s relief. It must “do some¬ 
thing.” Do what ? 




I- 




2 


Our fathers would have taken the question to a body of experts, 
wise enough to form, and small enough to express and enact an 
opinion into a law ; for they believed that the Nation’s safety 
depended upon the restriction of suffrage to those who should be most 
competent to its exercise ; but we have the pitiable necessity of sub¬ 
mitting the question that touches human welfare at every point to 
13 , 000,000 of people, most of whom are utterly ignorant regarding 
the absolute need of the times. 

And to this unwieldly mass a few visionary people ask that as 
many millions of women, even more fully uninformed and ignorant, 
be added—ask that when Patrick O’Flaherty goes to the polls he 
may be accompanied by his wife, his mother and his daughters ; 
that Gustave Schwartz shall not exercise his “right” of suffrage 
without the same power being given all of his female relatives, and 
that Washington Lincoln Freeman shall call on his way to the polls 
at our kitchen for Dinah and Chloe and Stella. 

Then, we are informed, the whole Nation will be enlightened, 
politics purified, the wheels of Government oiled, and peace and 
prosperity will settle down upon the land like a dove with folded 
wings, and women shall have their freedom ! God grant the day 
be far distant ! 

Albany, April 25 , i8g6 . E. S. C. 





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FROM “THE WORLD,” LONDON, 

JUI.Y 19th, 1899. 


WOMAN AND WHINE. 

The world’s women have spoken their mind and departed from 
our midst, and one is at last able to sit down calml)^ to recall the 
prevailing note of the International Congress. Day after day the 
clatter of tongues went on. Five meetings concerned with as many 
different subjects would proceed simultaneously, and eager women 
would dodge from one to the other for fear of missing a single idea, 
making rushes now and again to luncheon parties, receptions, or 
evening “at homes.” It would be difficult to name a subject, from 
shoes and ships and sealing-wax to cabbages and rings, which did 
not come within range of the feminine tongue. And yet it is not 
easy to say what is the outcome of it all. This is perhaps partly 
due to the multiplicity of the problems which the ladies set them¬ 
selves to solve ; partly, perhaps, to the exuberant verbosity of 
speakers who found themselves face to face with the chance of a life¬ 
time. For it not infrequently happened that an enthusiastic 
speaker had reached her time-limit before she had finished her 
exordium ; and you can hardly criticise a sermon of which you have 
heard no more than the text. 

But now that the dust has settled and the tumult subsided, the 
note that remains in our ear is not, as might be supposed, one of 
jubilation and triumph at the amazing progress of womanhood to 
the goal of emancipation, a career, and an income. The note is 
rather one of complaint, of dissatisfaction, of a wistful regret. Of 
all the speeches which assailed our ears, that of Mrs. Fenwick Miller 
will linger longest in our memory. Women are elevating the news¬ 
papers, purifying the Post-Office by their presence, and earning very 
respectable salaries. But just as Mr. Henry George was startled to 
find that the tramp had appeared in the free and glorious United 
States, so Mrs. Fenwick Miller is troubled that in the newer and 
nobler world of which woman is the guiding spirit the lazy husband 
shows, as it were, the slippered foot. The husband of the woman 
with a career takes it for granted that his wife should go careering 
and earn an income ; he himself lies upon the sofa at home, reads 
novels and smokes cigars. He does not even mind the baby and 
order the dinner. And Mrs. Fenwick Miller complains bitterly that 
so many women are handicapped by the obligation to support lazy 
husbands. Now, this aspect of the case is really a very serious one, 




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for it suggests a difficulty which will certainly have to be faced by 
the careering sex. There are, to put it frankly, not enough careers 
for everybody to have one. And if our women despatch our tele¬ 
grams, write our novels, tend our libraries, run our farms, and heal 
our diseases, there will be by so much the less room for men in the 
world of work. The lazy husband will find ample apology in the 
fact that his wife insists upon doing the work which should have 
fallen to his share. 

Perhaps, however, we are not progressing so much as we 
imagine. It is true that the speakers at the Congress laid almost 
irritating stress upon the “enormous strides made by women.” (It 
is not an attractive picture of the present-day woman!) But it is 
not easy for the individual to determine whether the social move¬ 
ment in which he is borne along is a forward one or a backward one. 
And we have no little apprehension that the appearance of the lazy 
husband denotes a retrogression to barbarism rather than a progress 
towards the millennium. In .savage countries the men do not work. 
It is the women who bear the burdens and till the ground, while the 
men sit calmly by and enjoy their leisure until such time as they feel 
like killing somebody. With civilization came the belief that women 
should have the easier time, while men did the work. But women, 
not knowing when they were well off, demanded a reversal of the 
position. It must be allowed that men showed no particular eager¬ 
ness to renounce the responsibility of earning an income for their 
womenfolk to spend. When, however, women had seized upon the 
positions which their husbands had found anything but easy, one 
may understand that the husbands were quite ready to accept the 
situation, and return to the barbaric practice of making the women 
do the work. 

Likewise we may understand the feelings of the woman who, 
having got what she wanted, finds that she does not want it at all. 
She does not intend, however, to enjoy her newly won privilege of 
earning the income of the family without effectual protest, as we 
gather from a horrifying suggestion which fell from Mrs. Fenwick 
Miller’s lips. It appears that women, if they do not get all they 
want, more particularly the Parliamentary franchise, are advised to 
take it out of their husbands at home. The horrors of civil war 
would be nothing to those of a struggle waged by means of ill-cooked 
fish, half-cooked entrees, and indigestible joints. The power of a 
wife to make her husband uncomfortable is almost unlimited, and 
his discomforts would come from so many quarters that he would not 
know whose hand was smiting him. If only the members of the 
discontented sex could decide exactly what they want, and organize 
a domestic campaign to get it, the lazy husband could not hold out 
for a week. The careering wife would be admitted to the House— 
if she were not oreviouslv turned out of the home. 


Woman Has Many Advantages 


What She Woued Lose Shoued Her Demand for Equae 
Rights Be Granted. 


To the Editor of the New York Times : 

The suffragists are claiming that the only property privilege of 
any consequence “which women have over men,” and which they 
must lose if they lower themselves to the legal standing of men by 
obtaining the right of suffrage, is “the right of wives to a support,” 
and they claim that in Wyoming, Kansas, and Colorado, where 
women vote, there has “never been made any effort to abolish this 
right.” 

Every lawyer will smile as he reads this statement, and I am 
willing to believe every man in New York State will recognize its 
falsity ; but women unfortunately do not seem to be aware of their 
own legal position, as they assume in some instances that the state¬ 
ment given above is correct. 

For the benefit of the women of New York State, Mr. Editor, I 
would like to be allowed the privilege of stating briefly what women 
would lose if they demanded equal rights. Until the year 1848 
married women w^ere subject to certain disabilities in regard to con¬ 
trolling and disposing of property and making contracts. Single 
women, however, whether spinster or widow, have always had percisely 
the same rights as men, and the laws have been made so favorable to 
all women that to-day their rights are not only equal in all respects 
to man’s but in many cases superior. 

A man can not sell and give a good title to real estate until his 
wife joins the deed. She can sell her real estate without her husband’s 
consent and the title is valid. Men realize this often when they 











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place in the name of their wives real estate that they may in case of 
future financial embarrassment, have a home provided for them; and 
many a woman who “is taxed without representation” is so taxed on 
property that is virtually the husband’s. A man cahnot dispose of 
his property by will, so as to deprive his wife of her one-third interest. 
But she can will all her real and personal estate—even the property 
he has given her—to any one she desires to, leaving her husband 
penniless. 

A father can not apprentice his child or appoint a testamentary 
guardian for the child, without the consent of the mother. 

If a woman leaves her husband for proper reasons, he is com¬ 
pelled to support her ; but if she has the property in her name and he 
be poor, she need not support him. If a woman sues for divorce her 
husband must grant her alimony for life, even if she remarries ; but 
she need not do the same by him if he sues for divorce. 

Any married woman may carry on any trade or business, and 
perform any labor or services on her own account, and her earnings 
are her sole and separate property, and may be used and invested by 
her in her own name. She may sue and be sued alone. She is joint 
guardian with her husband of their children. What legal advantage 
can she then obtain by the ballot ? It has been repeatedly shown 
that the question of wages cannot be affected by legislation, or that, 
if it could be, it could not be enforced—and yet, even here, discrimi¬ 
nation is made in favor of women; for in New York and Brooklyn 
if any man fails to pay the wages due a female employe up to $50 he 
is liable to be imprisoned upon a bod}^ execution and kept in close 
confinement without the privilege of bail, while none of his proper!}' 
is exempt from execution. 

Do not these facts prove that there are “other privileges of 
consequence,” that women must give up, if they demand and obtain 
‘ ‘equal rights’ ’ with men ? 

Albany, N. Y., March 28 , i8g6 . 


A. P. P. 


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Women and the Liquor Traffic 


Why Female Suffrage Would not Aid the Cause 
OF Prohibition. 


To the Editor of the Neiv York Times: 

In the Christian Advocate the statement is made that in the 
city of Philadelphia there are 8,034 persons engaged in the retail 
liquor business, and of that number 3,696 are women. 

So far as the statistics in the cities in New York State have been 
within reach, I have found that the proportion of women engaged in 
the liquor traffic is about the same as in Philadelphia. In 1,100 
applications for liquor licenses in Boston, 491 women are named as 
copartners, The list is given in three Boston newspapers, and is not 
yet complete. 

Statistics show that, while the population of the United States 
has increased but 20 per cent in the last two decades, the number of 
female drinkers and drug-takers have increased 500 per cent. 

In view of these facts, does not the theory that suffrage extended 
to all women would work for the prohibition of liquor selling seem 
fallacious ? 

The laws are strict enough. The trouble is that they are not 
enforced ; and the granting of suffrage to women does not mean 
anything, so far as their enforcement goes. The ballot is simply a 
piece of paper, valueless except for the force that lies behind it, and 
that force is the power to enforce its provisions by brute strength, if 
necessary. 

We have seen in sq-called prohibition States that prohibition 
does not prohibit. And we have seen also in Wyoming, where 
women suffrage has obtained for twenty-five years, that the laws 
relating to the sale of intoxicating liquors are very lax, that gamb¬ 
ling is allowed by law, and that not a single act of legislation aimed 
at the betterment of the human race has been passed through 
woman’s influence. 

Let the women enforce the present laws. This will be practical 
and feasible. K. S. C. 

Albany, April 4., i8p6. 





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WOMAN’S REALM. 


Mail Express , New York , Jan . 13, 1897. 

Mrs. Mary Ellen Lease, the famous campaign orator, was in¬ 
troduced to the club called the Society for Political Study, and 
made an address in which she denounced “ man-made ” laws, which 
she said were unjust to women, which prevented women from having 
control of their children and forbid women holding property. She 
was opposed to large appropriations for warships, and called atten¬ 
tion to the immorality of men tliroughout the nation. Mrs. Lease’s 
speech was impromptu, but the subjects she brought up had been 
studied by the Society for Political Study with the greatest care, and 
they did not therefore meet with either commendation or satisfaction. 
As a matter of fact, the expression “ man-made ” laws is incorrect, 
because laws are the growth of civilization and represent queens as 
well as kings, able princesses as well as princes, and, above all, the 
desire of the great statesmen of the world to do the greatest good for 
their own people. Even the very common law, that which Mrs. 
Lease reviles, was made to protect women and children, and in the 
period wdiere it was made did its work with, great thoroughness. In 
the present time it is not true that the old common law, as Mrs. 
Lease says, prevails in this country in respect to women. In New 
York alone, which represents over one-tenth of the population of the 
United States, woman, with the exception of voting, has more rights 
than man, and on the other hand, has much fewer responsibilities. 
A man can be taken away from a great business, at a loss of thou¬ 
sands of dollars, from the sickbed of his own child, or from a meet¬ 
ing of his favorite club to serve upon a ^ury in a case involving five 
cents, while such a thing cannot occur to woman. 



A married woman in New York can deed her property or leave 
it will without her husband’s knowledge or consent, and even 
against it, but a married man can do neither. A poor man is prima¬ 
rily liable for his wife's debts, even if she has lots of money, but a 
rich woman is not liable for her husband’s debts, not even if the}^ are 
contracted when he is sick and is supported by her in her own house. 
The liberality and generousity of the law to woman in New York 
State has been followed by a majority of the States of this Union, 
and more especially those of the North. When Mrs. Lease, there¬ 
fore, says that there are only four States in which the common law 
does not govern and control the sex she is stating that which is not 
the fact. There are four States in which women vote, but voting is 
not a common law right, and has nothing to do with coriimon law. 
Voting is an arbitrary privilege created and sustained by statute. 






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WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


REPRINTED FROM 

“ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS OF THE DAY 


BY 

GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L. 

Author of “Canada and the Canadian Question,” “The United States : 
An Outline of Political History,” etc. 


Keto gork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 

1898 

All rights reserved 


Price Ten Cents 


Copyright, 1893, 

By MACMILLAN AND CO. 

Set up and electrotyped November, 1893. 
edition printed August, 1894; August, 1897. 


Revised 


Nortotjob : 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


It is not necessary, in entering upon this question, to dilate 
on its sentimental side. Nothing can add force or tenderness 
to the names of wife and home. Suffice it to say, that man 
cannot withhold from woman anything that is good for her, or 
give her anything that is bad for her, without injuring himself 
and their children in the same measure. 

Shall man make over to woman half of the sovereign power 
which has hitherto been his, and which, if he chooses, he can 
keep? This is the question broadly stated. Woman, in mak¬ 
ing the demand, shows confidence in man’s affection. The rule 
by which the question is to be settled is the joint interest 
which the two sexes have in good government, not any abstract 
claim of right. For an abstract claim of right there appears 
to be no foundation. Power which is natural carries with it 
right, while it is subject to the restraints of conscience. 
Weakness cannot be said to have a right to artificial power, 
though the concession of such power within reasonable limits 
may be not only kind but wise, just, and beneficial to humanity 
and civilisation. That to which every member of a com¬ 
munity, whether man, woman, or child, whether white or black, 
whether above or below the age of twenty-one, has a right, is 
the largest attainable measure of good government. If this 
or any other political change would be conducive to good 
government, the whole community has a right to it 5 if it would 
not, the whole community, including the women, or those, 
whoever they may be, whom it is proposed to enfranchise, 
have a right to a refusal of the change. The number of 
women who spontaneously sought the change appears to have 
been small. Great efforts and vehement appeals on the part of 

199 


200 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


the ladies with whom the movement originated were required 
to set any considerable part of the sex in motion. This is 
important as an indication both of the absence of any great 
grievance and of the unbiassed judgment of the sex with regard 
to its own interests. But were the demand more spontaneous 
and general it would still be incumbent on the present holders 
of power before abdicating to consider whether in the common 
interest their abdication was to be desired. 

As to the equality of the sexes, no question is raised; they 
may be perfectly equal though their spheres are different, that 
of the man being public life, that of the woman the home. 
Nor is there any occasion for pitting male or female gifts or 
qualities against each other. Supposing woman even to be 
superior, it does not follow that the field of her superiority is 
public life. 

That the tendency of civilisation has been to elevate woman 
is true. But elevation is a different thing from assimilation 
to man. We are told, not so much by women, perhaps, as by 
their champions, that the time for protection and chivalry has 
past and the time for justice has come. But it is not made 
evident that the bare justice, which regulates the relation 
between man and man, would suit the relation between man 
and woman, or that chivalry and protection on the one side, 
with the corresponding recognition of them on the other, do 
not in this case constitute justice. 

The woman suffrage movement is a part of a general 
attempt to change the relations between the sexes, to set 
woman free from what hitherto have been considered the limi¬ 
tations of her sex, and make her the competitor instead of the 
helpmate of man.^ Women are forcing their way into the male 
professions, including that of law, into the dissecting-room, in 
company with the male students, into male places of educa¬ 
tion, and into the smoking-room. Some of them have lately 
taken to riding astride. From England we hear that ladies 
have been undergoing military drill; from New York that they 

1 See Mrs. E. Lynn Linton on women as social insurgents in the 
Nineteenth Century of October, 1891. 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


201 


have been emulating the training of male athletes and the 
horsemanship of the steeplechaser. We are reminded of the 
Eoman ladies under the Empire who when other excitement 
had been exhausted took to that of the gladiatorial school. 

The old foundations of authority are shaken by the collapse 
of beliefs on which social order as well as personal morality 
has hitherto rested, and by the political disturbance attending 
the advent of democracy. We are in the ferment of a revolu¬ 
tionary age, and of that ferment the Eevolt of Woman, as one 
of the leaders of the movement called it, is a part. 

Among the features of a revolutionary era is the prevalence 
of a feeble facility of abdication. The holders of power, how¬ 
ever natural and legitimate, are too ready to resign it on the 
first demand. They do not take time to consider whether their 
power is rightful or not, whether it has or has not on the 
whole been used for good, whether, if in any case it has not 
been used for good, they cannot amend their course, or whether 
it is likely to be better employed by those to whom they are 
called upon to transfer it. The nerves of authority are shaken 
by the failure of conviction. It is an inherent consequence 
of the demagogic system that every demand for the suffrage, 
reasonable or unreasonable, should prevail as soon as it shows 
strength, because the politician is afraid by opposition to make 
an enemy of the coming vote. 

It is evident that sexual revolution must have its limita¬ 
tions if the human race is to continue. There are some land¬ 
marks of nature which cannot be removed, and the females of 
every species must be the organs of its perpetuation. Women 
must bear and nurse children; and if they do this, it is impos¬ 
sible that they should compete with men in occupations which 
demand complete devotion as well as superior strength of 
muscle or brain. There appears to be a tendency among the 
leaders of the Eevolt of Woman to disparage matrimony as a 
bondage, and the rearing of children as an aim too low for an 
intellectual being. Such ideas are not likely to spread widely, 
or they would threaten the life of the race. They prevail 
chiefly in the highly educated and sentimental classes, not in 


202 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


the homes of labour. Nature, it may be said, will look to this 
and in the end vindicate her own law. No doubt she will, yet 
the revolt against her may cost us dear. 

If it is a question of right, children have their rights as well 
as women. They have not less right to motherly care than 
they and their mother have to being fed by the husband’s 
labour. 

At present the demand in England is only for the enfran¬ 
chisement of spinsters and widows. But this limitation, while 
it betrays a consciousness that there would be danger to the 
family in the full measure, is understood to be merely a 
stroke of tactics. Widow and spinster suffrage is the thin 
edge of the wedge. From the political point of view there 
would be manifest absurdity and wrong in making marriage 
politically penal, and excluding from the franchise the very 
women who are commonly held to be best discharging the 
duties of their sex, and would be likely to be its fairest 
representatives. Already the thoroughgoing section of the 
party repudiates the limitation. The spinster and widow vote 
would be an irresistible lever whenever political parties were 
nearly balanced. When the suffrage had been conceded to all 
women, as the women slightly outnumber the men, and many 
of the men, sailors, for example, or men employed on railways, 
or in itinerant callings, could not go to the poll, the woman’s 
vote would preponderate, and government, if it was in unison 
with the votes, would be more female than male. Nor is it by 
the leaders and chief authors of the movement intended that 
we should stop here. The woman of the political platform 
does not limit her ambition to a vote. She wants to sit in 
Parliament or in Congress. When she gains her first point 
she will have practically established her claim to the next; 
those who are qualified to give a mandate, she will say, are 
qualified to bear it; those who are qualified to decide prin¬ 
ciples of legislation are qualified to legislate; those who are 
qualified to dictate a policy are qualified to carry it into effect. 
In New Zealand, having gained the franchise, she has already 
preferred the further claim. It might shock our prejudices at 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


203 


first to see a woman taking part in a Parliamentary debate. 
It shocks our prejudices at first to see her taking part in a 
faction fight, mounting the pulpit, or thundering from a plat¬ 
form, as well as to see her in half male attire, or riding in 
man’s fashion. Established sentiment and old ideas of deli¬ 
cacy have been already set aside. The female aspirant to a 
seat in Parliament or Congress, and to a place in the Cabinet, 
will have, therefore, little difficulty in proving her claim. 
She will have no difficulty whatever in enforcing it. That, 
the woman’s vote will do for her. A tenth part of the 
woman’s vote might do it for her if the parties were nearly 
balanced and the politicians were alarmed. Politics under the 
party system are a demagogic auction, and an inevitable slide 
down hill. In the United States, where all qualifications for 
the suffrage other than that of simple citizenship have been 
abolished or practically nullified, female suffrage, like male 
suffrage, would no doubt be universal. That the change thus 
presents itself at once in its full extent may partly account for 
the general conservatism of the American people on this sub¬ 
ject. But there is also the safeguard of the special process 
which is required in the States as well as in the Federation 
for amendments of the Constitution, and which enforces the 
submission of the question to a constituency beyond the range 
of the arts and influences to which individual legislators are 
apt to yield. 

Political power has hitherto been exercised by the male sex; 
not because man has been a tyrannical usurper and has brutally 
thrust his weaker partner out of her rights, but in the course 
of nature, because man alone could uphold government and 
enforce the law. Let the edifice of law be as moral and as intel¬ 
lectual as you will, its foundation is the force of the com¬ 
munity, and the force of the community is male. Women 
have not yet thought of claiming the employment of policemen, 
nor of petitioning that they may be bound to answer to the 
call of the sheriff when he summons the citizens to put down 
disorder. This fundamental fact that law rests on public force 
may be hidden from sight for the moment by the clouds of 


204 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


emotional rhetoric, but it will assert itself in the end. Laws 
passed by the woman’s vote will not be felt to have force behind 
them. Women are the great prohibitionists, having only too 
strong inducements, many of them, to support any supposed 
antidote to drunkenness, and not seeing that the taste of a 
man engaged in heavy labour and exposed to the weather for 
the stimulus of wine or beer may be as natural as the taste of 
his home-keeping partner for the stimulus of tea. With 
woman suffrage we should have Prohibition. Prohibitionists 
advocate woman suffrage on that account. Behind prohibition 
of strong drinks begins to loom prohibition of tobacco. We 
have had proposals from women to extend capital punishment 
to cases of outrage on their sex. Would the stronger sex obey 
such laws when it was known that they were enacted by the 
weaker? Would it obey any laws manifestly carried by the 
female vote in the interest of the women against that of 
the men? If it would not, the result would be contempt for 
the law and anarchy, which would not be likely to enure 
to the advantage of the weak. Man would be tempted to resist 
woman’s government when it galled him, not only by the con¬ 
sciousness of his strength, but by his pride, which would make 
itself heard in the end, though its voice for a time might be 
stifled by sentimental declamation. ‘‘In muscle,” says the 
Eeport of Mr. Blair’s Committee of the United States Senate 
in 1889 , “ woman is inferior to man. But muscle has nothing 
to do with legislation or government. In intellect she is 
man’s equal, in character she is, by his own admission, his 
superior and constitutes the angelic portion of humanity.” 
We have seen reason for thinking that muscle has something 
to do, if not with the acts of legislatures or governments, with 
that which gives those acts their force. Mr. Blair might have 
felt this if, at the time of the strike, he had been at Chicago. 

In Dahomey there are female warriors. There may have 
been Amazons in primitive times. But in the civilised world 
the duty of defending the country in war falls on the male sex 
alone, and it would seem that there ought to be some connection 
between that duty and political power. To this it is answered 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


205 


that not all men perform the duty, and that women as well as 
men contribute as taxpayers to the support of the army. In 
some countries, as in Germany, all men of military age are, 
and in every country they ought to be, liable to military 
service. But everywhere the responsibility rests on the men, 
who would have to meet the necessity if it arose. That some 
men are old or disqualified for arms signifies nothing; political 
rules must be general and disregard exceptions. The women, 
it is said, or such of them as have property of their own, con¬ 
tribute to the military expenses. But so do the men, in addi¬ 
tion to the male duty of personal service. Nor is the plea that 
they send their husbands and sons much to the purpose when 
the question is as to their own qualifications for serving in war. 

At the same time it would be a mistake to think that female 
rulers have been averse from war, and that if the power were 
in female hands war would be no more. Women are apt to be 
warlike because their responsibility is less. In the Southern 
States at the time of Secession no partisans of the war were 
fiercer than the women. Few male rulers have been more 
bellicose than Catherine of Eussia, Elizabeth Queen of Spain 
(the Termagant, as she was called), Maria Theresa of Austria, 
Madame de Pompadour, and the Empress Eugenie. Nor is it 
unlikely that female sentiment might be in favour of some war 
when male sentiment or prudence was against it. French 
women might have voted for a crusade in aid of the Pope. 
English women might have voted for armed intervention in 
favour of the Queen of Naples, whose heroism touched their 
imaginations at the time. Would the men obey? Would they 
shoulder their muskets and march or bid the army march? 
They would not; and here again law and government would 
break down. 

Besides, the transfer of power from the military to the 
unmilitary sex involves a change in the character of a nation. 
It involves, in short, national emasculation. What would be 
the fate of a community in some dire extremity if it were 
largely ruled by its women? Philanthropy, theosophy, and 
Utopianism have not yet triumphed. This is the age of 


206 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


Bismarck, of the Franco-Prussian War, of the War of Seces¬ 
sion. How would the North have fared in its conflict with the 
South if, at each turn of the wavering and desperate struggle, 
it had been swayed by the emotions of its women? One of 
the ladies whose evidence was taken before Mr. Blair’s Com¬ 
mittee, admitted that, in the days of force, when women needed 
the protection of man, male government may have been justi¬ 
fiable; but these, she said, were piping times of peace. Piping 
times of peace, when America is paying the pension list of an 
enormous war and Europe has millions of men in arms! 
Woman does not in civilised countries need the protection of 
the individual man except as policeman or escort. But she 
does need, or may at any time need, the armed protection of 
the male sex as* a whole. 

We have had successive extensions of that which is called 
liberty, but ought, if we would think clearly, to be called 
political power; for a man may have liberty without a vote 
and a vote without liberty. But hitherto the changes, though 
some of them have been blind and dangerous enough, have 
imperilled only the State. The change now proposed vitally 
affects the family, which, until the Socialists have their way, 
will be of fully as much consequence to us as the State. The 
family is in fact the grand issue. The solidarity of the family 
it is which the various movements for what is called the 
emancipation of women tend collectively to subvert. It is 
easy to draw ideal pictures of husband and wife agreeing to 
differ on political questions, going at elections to opposite 
committee-rooms, perhaps speaking on opposite platforms, 
voting on opposite sides, and then returning to a blissful 
hearth, with harmony and affection unimpaired. This ideal 
might be realised in the case of such a couple as Mr. and Mrs. 
John Stuart Mill. But what are the effects of a faction fight 
on the tempers of ordinary mortals? In America at the time 
of the Civil War would unbroken harmony have prevailed 
between a Unionist husband and a Secessionist wife? Would 
unbroken harmony prevail between a Unionist husband and a 
Gladstonian wife at the present day ? 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


207 


Hitherto the family has been a unit represented in the State 
by its head, and whatever storms may have raged in the com 
monwealth, the peace and order of the home have remained 
usually undisturbed. A change which throws the family into 
the political caldron calls surely for special consideration. In 
political and economical discussion our attention is commonly 
turned to wealth, education, or some factor of our well-being 
which is increased or diminished by government or legislation. 
We seldom think so distinctly as we ought how large a measure 
of happiness as well as of excellence depends upon affection. 
A man who prized his home would probably say that if it was 
thought fit that his wife should have the vote instead of 
himself, she might have it, but that he protested against any 
proposal to give the family more than one vote. 

Caution is the more necessary since it is clear that party has 
laid hold of this question. Each party, or a section of each 
party in England, fancies that it would gain by the change. 
Some Conservatives believe that the nature of woman is con¬ 
servative, and that she would vote under the influence of 
traditional sentiment, perhaps also under that of her priest. 
The late leader of the Conservatives in England was in favour 
of enfranchising the women, as he was in favour of enfranchis¬ 
ing the proletariat, with the same expectation of votes. But 
Conservatives who play this game should remember that the 
conservative woman as a rule is probably feminine and likely 
to stay at home, while the radical woman is pretty sure to go 
forth rejoicing to the fray. Nor would the clerical influence 
be all on one side. Every Catholic Irishwoman would be 
brought to the poll by the priest. Assuredly the female char¬ 
acter is not unsusceptible of revolutionary violence. Erance 
saw the Maenads of the Eevolution, and has had her Louise 
Michel. In New York a female enthusiast has been heard 
inciting the destitute to armed violence and public rapine. 
However this may be, when party lays its hand on the home, 
those who care for the home more than for party receive a 
warning to be on their guard. 

Previous extensions of the suffrage have been to an unrepre- 


208 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


sented class, and a class which might plead that its special 
interest would suffer by want of representation, though pos¬ 
sibly in some cases those interests were likely to suffer as much 
by the influence of enfranchised ignorance on government as 
by any class bias. But women are not a class, they are a sex. 
Their class interests throughout the scale are identical with 
those of the man, and are effectually represented by the male 
vote. It would probably be impossible to devise a case in 
which a legislature dealing with female interests in regard to 
property, taxation, or any other subject, could be misled by 
motives of class. 

If property held by women is taxed without being repre¬ 
sented, so is that held by men, in the United States absolutely, 
and in England, saving only the trifling amount of property 
still required, directly or indirectly, as a qualification for the 
suffrage. 

Have women as a sex any wrongs which male legislatures 
cannot be expected to redress, so that in order to obtain justice 
it is necessary that there shall be an abdication by man of the 
sovereign power? If there are, whether in England or the 
United States, let them be named. Named hitherto they have 
not been. The law regarding the property of married women 
has been so far reformed in the interests of the wife, that, 
instead of being unduly favourable to the husband, it seems 
rather inspired by mistrust of him. The practice is still more 
so. It has become the custom to tie up a woman’s property 
on marriage so that she shall not be able, even if she is so 
inclined, to make provision for her husband, in case he sur¬ 
vives her, in old age, and save him from the necessity of 
receiving alms from his own children. The lawyers naturally 
are active in the work which multiplies legal relations and 
interests. About everything has been done which civil legis¬ 
lation could do to impress the wife with the belief that her 
interest and that of her husband are not only separate but 
adverse; that she does not leave her father’s home when she is 
married; that her husband is not one flesh with her; and that 
all her relations by blood are nearer to her, in interest at all 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


209 


events, than the man on whose breast she lays her head. 
Matrimonial superstition has been effectually rebuked by 
enabling husband and wife to sue each other. The laws of 
Massachusetts discriminate in favour of women by exempting 
unmarried women of small estate from taxation; by allowing 
women and not men to acquire a settlement without paying a 
tax; by compelling husbands to support their wives, but 
exempting the wife, even when rich, from supporting an 
indigent husband; by making men liable for debts of wives, 
and not vice versa.^ In the State of New York a husband 
cannot dispose of his wife^s dower in his lands without her 
consent, but the wife can, without her husband’s consent, dis¬ 
pose of all her property; a husband can be made to pay for 
necessaries supplied to a wife, a wife cannot be made to pay 
for necessaries supplied to a husband; a wife’s dower-right 
cannot be divested by a will, but a wife can will away all her 
property without leaving provision for her husband; women 
are privileged in cases of execution for debt; women are sub¬ 
stantially exempt from arrest in all civil cases; while the 
factory laws and other laws abound in exceptional protection 
for women. Legal reformers are able to boast that they have 
“emancipated woman from the domination of her husband.” 
They must not forget that the domination carries with it 
maintenance and protection which will not be given without 
return. Make the marriage contract too onerous to the man, 
and he in his turn will some day begin to think of emancipa¬ 
tion. If he does he is the stronger. Nothing can alter that 
fact or its practical significance in the long run. Of this the 
leaders of the Revolt of Woman will do well to take note. 

That the administration of the law has been unfavourable 
to women, few will contend. In jury cases, at least, the diffi¬ 
culty is not for women to get justice against men, but for men 
to get justice against women. It is doubtful whether the 
introduction of women into the jury-box, for which woman- 
suffragists contend, could make juries more partial to women 

1 See Minority Beport of Mr. Blair’s Committee of the Senate of the 
United States, February, 1889, p. 14. 


210 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


than they are; if it did, the failure of justice would be mon¬ 
strous indeed. In criminal cases mercy has been shown to the 
woman. “Since I have been in Parliament,” said John 
Bright, “ I think I could specify nearly a score of instances in 
which the lives of women would be spared where the lives of 
men would be taken.” Can it be believed that the efforts 
which have been made to save Mrs. May brick from punishment 
would have been made in favour of a husband convicted of the 
murder of his wife? There is no reason for this partiality 
except one which implies a radical difference between the sexes 
and the willingness of the weaker sex to accept the protection 
of the stronger. Nor will the privilege long survive the ground 
of it; women cannot have both equality and privilege. 

Does the grievance consist in any bar to the competition of 
women with men in the professions or trades? Such bars have 
by male legislation been largely removed. We have female 
doctors of medicine everywhere, and if their practice is limited, 
it is because women themselves in the graver cases seem still 
to put more confidence in men. Women are being admitted to 
the law. To their addressing themselves to the feelings of 
juries there seems to be an objection apart from delicacy, if 
justice is the object of courts. They have been admitted into 
male universities, we shall presently see with what effect on 
the masculine character of the system, while, in spite of the 
principle on which coeducation is based, female colleges are 
not yet thrown open to men. They have got the school- 
teacherships largely into their hands; with doubtful benefit, 
whatever theorists may say, to the characters and manners of 
the boys. Government clerkships and offices of all kinds are 
now filled with women, who are thus made independent of 
marriage, though this cannot be done without at the same time 
withdrawing employment from men who might have main¬ 
tained women as their wives. It is complained that female 
workers are underpaid, and female claimants of the franchise 
say that if they had power, they would legislate so as to raise 
woman’s wages. Legislation of this kind would require sup¬ 
plementary enactments forbidding employers and capital to go 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


211 


out of the trade. But are women underpaid? Are they paid 
less than the men when their work is of equal value? It may 
be that in some cases custom has been unjust to them, as it 
often is to male workers also. This time will redress. It is 
only the lighter trades that women can ply, and a needlewoman 
can hardly expect to be paid like an engine-driver or a steve¬ 
dore. In some trades certain continuance is an element of 
value, and certain continuance is impossible for woman unless 
she renounces marriage. Fashionable dressmakers, female 
artists, singers, and actresses are not underpaid. The gains 
of prima donnas are enormous; their exactions are notorious, 
and they stint without compunction the inferior performers of 
their own sex. 

A proof of man^s injustice to woman commonly cited was 
the difference made in the treatment of the two sexes in 
regard to infidelity. The law can hardly now be said to be 
unjust; that the social penalty should be the same in both cases 
is not to be expected, for the simple reason that the offence is 
not the same. The sin of the woman is a sin not only against 
her partner, but against the family, into which she brings an 
adulterine child. A pointsman and the man who tends a 
furnace may alike fall asleep at their posts without any 
difference in their moral guilt, but one lets a fire go out, and 
the other wrecks a train. 

All the legislation and all the language on the subject of 
seduction assume that the blame rests entirely on the man, 
though there are many cases in which he is more the seduced 
than the seducer, and in no case where the woman is grown 
up and is consenting can the guilt be wholly on one side. 
To assume that the guilt is wholly on one side and that the 
woman, however freely she consents, must be blameless, is to 
subvert the safeguard of honour in the female breast. 

Mr. Blair’s Eeport indeed proclaims that “without the exer¬ 
cise of the natural and inalienable right of suffrage neither 
life, liberty, nor property can be secured.” If by liberty is 
meant the exercise of political power, that part of the allega¬ 
tion is undeniably true. To say that neither life nor property 


212 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


can be secure without the suffrage would be to say that no 
security for life or property has existed in most of the coun¬ 
tries of Europe till within the last half century, nor for the 
great majority of the people even in England. To the ordinary 
observer it appears not only that the lives, liberties, and 
properties of American women are secure, but that they are 
more secure, if anything, than those of the menj and that the 
attitude of men in the United States toward women is rather 
that of subjection than that of domination. ‘^Actual and 
practical slavery, which one of the ladies who gives evidence 
declares to be the condition of woman without the ballot, has 
certainly in the case of the American slave disguised itself in 
very deceptive forms. “No one,’^ says another lady, “has 
denied to women the right of burial, and in that one sad 
necessity of human life they stand on an equal footing with 
men.” Such language seems to mock our understandings. 
Comparisons of the condition of woman denied the suffrage 
with that of the Negro in the South, have often been made, 
and in this Report we are told that the exclusion of women 
from a convention “ constituted the startling revelation of a 
real subjection of woman to man world-wide and in many 
respects as complete and galling, when analysed and duly con¬ 
sidered by its victims, as that of the Negro to his master.” 
The Negro, nevertheless, would not have been sorry to change 
conditions. The papers the other day gave an account of a 
raid made upon a saloon by a party of women in masks, who 
beat the proprietor with clubs. Several such acts of violence 
on the part of women have been recorded; but they are com¬ 
mitted apparently not only with impunity but with general 
approbation. Resistance to them appears to be proscribed. 
American women, also, seem to use the cowhide, whenever 
they think fit, to avenge their personal wrongs. These are not 
practices in which the Negro was allowed to indulge toward 
his master before emancipation, or in which he has even been 
allowed to indulge since. If the men of the United States 
were called to account for their treatment of the women, and 
the women at the same time for the performance of their special 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


213 


duty to the race, it seems doubtful, at least supposing that 
American writers on these subjects tell the truth, whether 
before an impartial tribunal judgment would go against the 
men. 

Against wife-beating, or cruelty of any sort to wives, which 
is commonly confined to the dregs of humanity, the law seems 
now severe enough; if it were more than severe enough it 
would be in danger of becoming a dead letter. Male brutality 
finds vent in bodily outrage, which can be reached by law. 
The bad wife can make her husband^s home miserable by vexa¬ 
tions which no law can reach. Many years ago an English 
clergyman was convicted of the murder of his wife, but his 
sentence was commuted when it was learned what his life had 
been. A man in England narrowly escaped imprisonment as 
a felon on a false charge of uttering base coin, cast on him by 
the machinations of a perfidious wife who wanted to live with 
her paramour. Law could have done nothing in the first case, 
practically could do nothing in the second. Children are less 
able to make their wrongs known than are women, yet cases 
not seldom come to light of cruel ill-treatment of children by 
women, especially by step-mothers. These cases, like those 
of wife-beating, are hideous. We punish the criminals when 
we can, but we do not propose to alter domestic relations. We 
trust, and in the immense majority of cases with reason, to 
affection, which is stronger than law. That affection is 
stronger than law is a fact often forgotten in dealing with 
these questions. It seems to be thought that the Statute Book 
is all. Nothing in the Statute Book, it has been truly said, 
prevents the most courteous of hosts from turning his guests 
out of his house at midnight in a storm. 

That the man should exercise authority in his family may 
be deemed unnatural and unjust when he ceases to be held 
responsible for the household. At present the State casts 
upon him the undivided responsibility. What the leaders of 
the woman’s rights movement practically seek is, for the 
woman, power without responsibility, for the man, responsi¬ 
bility without power. But this is an arrangement in which 


214 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


man, thongli lie may be talked into it for the moment, is not 
likely in the end to acquiesce. 

Is the marriage tie still too tight? ^ Is divorce not easy 
enough? One would think that divorce was easy enough in 
America, when in some States you have a divorce for every ten 
marriages, when a judge at Chicago can dissolve eight mar¬ 
riages in sixty-two minutes, when wedlock is beginning to be 
talked of as an experiment which may be terminated if it is 
not found pleasant to both sides.^ This does not fall far short 
of the civilised form of promiscuity the tendency to which one 
advanced reformer hails, or from the idea of another who lays 
it down that ‘‘there is nothing impure, nothing wrong, in the 
voluntary sexual act per se though not sanctioned by what we 
now term marriage.”^ Mormonism, if its polygamy is de¬ 
nounced, has matter for a retort. American legislatures 
themselves are beginning to recoil. In Great Britain divorce 
is not so easy, yet it is surely not too difficult if the marriage 
tie is to be preserved. The children, who cannot fail to suffer 
by the wreck of the family, are entitled to consideration as 
well as the parents. Society at large is entitled to considera¬ 
tion. Though marriages are made not in heaven but on earth, 
it may safely be said that the great majority of them are 
happy; at least that the partners are happier united than they 
would have been alone. But their success depends, in ordinary 
cases, on the permanence of the bond, which enforces restraint 
of temper and mutual accommodation. If divorce were always 
open, compatibility would be seldom found; the bond would be 
broken by the unscrupulous as often as matrimony failed to 
realise the dreams of courtship. It is easy to paint horrible 

1 See Mona Caird’s articles in the Fortnightly (Vol. liii.) and Westminster 
Beviews (Vol. cxxx.). See also Mill’s The Subjection of Woman, Chap. ii. 

2 It seems that the largest number of divorces are found in the com¬ 
munities where the advocates of female suffrage are most numerous, and 
where the individuality of woman in relation to her husband, which such 
a doctrine inculcates, is greatest. The movement, therefore, or at least 
the tendencies, appear to be connected. See Minority Beport, p. 10. 

3 Westminster Beview, May, 1894. 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


216 


pictures of unwilling union after mutual disappointment. 
Such things do happen, and very tragical and deplorable they 
are. The remedy is caution before marriage, not the virtual 
overthrow of an institution on which, so far as we can see, the 
order, purity, and happiness of society depend.^ 

Marriage may be described from one point of view as a 
restraint imposed upon the passions of the man for the benefit 
of the woman. Cold-blooded philosophers choose to speak of 
the sexual passion in man as brutal. Mighty it is; it is no 
more brutal than any other passion or appetite gratification of 
which is necessary to the preservation of life and the race. It 
is the physical basis of sentiments the most beautiful and 
refined. At all events it is in most natures imperious. Were 
it not, man could hardly be induced to take on him the burden 
of maintaining wife and children. Being imperious, it will be 
gratified, if not by marriage, in other ways, and woman would 
not be the gainer by the change. 

The matrimonial history of Shelley is instructive and full 
of warning because he was so highly refined, and raised so much 
above the animal passions of ordinary men. Shelley, as his 
admiring biographer frankly tells us, finding after some two 
years or more of marriage, that his Harriet ^‘did not suit him,” 
though she “ had given no cause whatsoever for repudiation by 
breach or tangible neglect of wifely duty,” cast her off in an 
‘^abrupt de facto manner” and took Mary to his arms. Mary, 
of course, was of the same opinion. “ Shelley,” says the biog¬ 
rapher, “ was an avowed opponent on principle to the formal and 
coercive tie of marriage; therefore in ceasing his marital con¬ 
nection with Harriet, and assuming a similar relation to Mary, 
he did nothing which he regarded as wrong, though as far as 
anything yet published goes, it must distinctly be said that he 
consulted his own option rather than Harriet’s.” The biogra- 

1 Reference cannot be made to this momentous subject without ac¬ 
knowledging the great service rendered to society by the Rev. Samuel W. 
Dike, LL.D., Corresponding Secretary of the United States National 
Divorce Reform League, whose laborious investigations have brought the 
facts before us. 


216 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


pher asserts that Harriet, after the separation, connected 
herself with some other protector, a charge which, it is to be 
presumed, he would not make without knowing it to be true, 
and the truth of which would not in any way mend the case.^ 
Legislation on these lines would suit some men better than any 
woman. It did not suit poor Harriet. 

It appears that in the series of legislative reforms which in 
the course of a century has been bringing Europe finally out 
of the feudal system, with its quasi-military relations, and with 
the vestiges of tribalism which lingered in it, into the system 
of modern society, the interests of both sexes have been 
embraced, and that of the female sex has had its full share. 
This, as the legislatures were male, seems to prove not only 
that men in legislating are unlikely to forget their wives, 
mothers, sisters, and daughters, but that women without votes 
can exercise great influence on legislation. The press is open 
to them, it is powerful, and not a few of them make use of it. 
The platform is open to as many of them as do not shrink from 
its publicity. They have access under the most favourable con¬ 
ditions to those by whom the law is made. That they have 
confidence in the justice and affection of men their present ap¬ 
peal, as has been said before, shows; for it is from man’s free 
will that they must expect the concession of the suffrage. Some 
of them, it is true, threaten us with a terrible vengeance if 
their petition is not heard, but they are powerless to give effect 
to their threats. They will renounce their present influence in 
grasping the vote. Let them appear as a separate interest in 
the political arena, and they will, like every other separate 
interest, waken an antagonism which does not now exist. 

That women are treated as citizens only for the purpose of 
taxation is the summary of their wrongs blazoned in mani¬ 
festos by the leaders of the movement. The answer is that the 
State treats them in all respects as citizens, giving them pro¬ 
tection for person, property, and character, with every benefit 

^ See Mr. William Michael Rossetti’s Memoir prefixed to his edition of 
Shelley’s Poetical Works. London: Moxon, 1870. Different versions 
have been given, but there can be no dispute about the main facts. 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


217 


which civil government can bestow, and therefore full value 
for their taxes. 

The plain question then presents itself in the joint interest 
of the two sexes, whether the exercise of political power by 
women would be generally conducive to good government. If 
it would not, the concession, it must be repeated, would be a 
wrong done to the whole community. We know very well 
that in some gifts and qualities woman is superior to man. 
Suppose she is superior to him on the whole. Suppose, to 
adopt the somewhat amatory language of Mr. Blair^s Com¬ 
mittee, she is the angelic portion of humanity. It does not 
follow that she is political any more than man is maternal or 
adapted for housekeeping. Nor is the absence of political 
qualities a disgrace to her any more than the absence of 
maternal or housekeeping qualities is to him. Difference of 
spheres, we must repeat, the spheres being equal in impor¬ 
tance, implies no disparagement. As a rule, it is in the 
affections and graces that woman is strong; and these, the 
affections at least, though they may be worth more than 
the practical qualities needed in politics, are not the practical 
qualities. But the training also is wanting. The political 
wisdom of men in general, to whatever it may amount, is 
formed by daily contact and collision with the world in which 
they have to gain their bread, and which impresses upon them 
in its rough school caution, prudence, the necessity of com¬ 
promise, the limitations of their will. Some of them are 
flighty enough after all, and the world just now is in no small 
peril from their flightiness. But their general tendency as a 
sex is to be commonplace and practical. Their life usually is 
more or less public, while that of woman is in the home. 
Moreover, they feel as a sex the full measure of responsibility 
in public action. This is not felt so strongly by their partners. 
If rash measures get the community into trouble, it is by the 
men that it must be got out again. To them it will fall to pull 
the waggon through the slough. The exception taken to 
female legislators, or Ministers of State, or judges, on account 
of the interruptions of the nursery might be met by appointing 


218 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


only spinsters or widows. But it would be impossible, with¬ 
out change of sentiment, to hold the female legislator, admin¬ 
istrator, or judge to the full measure of male responsibility. 
If they were called to account they would plead their sex. We 
are told that ladies in New York objected to the appointment 
of education commissioners of their own sex on the ground that 
they were exempted from criticism by the gallantry of the men. 

It is supposed that women would allay the angry strife of 
faction and refine its coarseness by imparting their gentleness, 
tenderness, and delicacy to public life. But is it not because 
they have been kept out of politics and generally out of the 
contentious arena that they have remained gentle, tender, and 
delicate? Weakness thrown into an exciting struggle usually 
shows itself, not by superior gentleness, but by loss of self- 
control. Of this, the crusade against the Contagious Diseases 
Act in England has given some proof. By the use which both 
the political parties in England have of late been making of 
women for electioneering purposes, the fury of the fray does 
not seem to have been allayed. 

“Corruption of male suffrage,” says Mr.Blair’s Eeport, “is 
already a well-nigh fatal disease.” Would it be cured by 
throwing in the other sex? That women would be likely, by 
taking part in public life, to make it pure, that they are less 
prone than men to favouritism, jobbery, and corruption, is 
contrary to experience, which shows that they are prone to 
these minor vices while they are comparatively seldom guilty 
of the greater crimes. 

In a paper prepared at the request of an association of 
women, which is cited in the Minority Eeport of the Senate 
Committee, Mr. Francis Parkman says of the female politician 
as she is and is likely to be in the United States: 

“It is not woman’s virtues that would be prominent or influential in 
the political arena, they would shun it by an invincible repulsion ; and 
the opposite qualities would be drawn into it. The Washington lobby 
has given us some means of judging what we may expect from the woman 
‘ inside politics.’ If politics are to be purified by artfulness, effrontery, 
insensibility, a pushing self-assertion, and a glib tongue, then we may 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


219 


look for regeneration; for the typical female politician will be richly 
endowed with all these gifts. 

“Thus accoutred for the conflict, she may fairly hope to have the 
better of her masculine antagonist. A woman has the inalienable right of 
attacking without being attacked in return. She may strike, but must 
not be struck either literally or figuratively. Most women refrain from 
abusing their privilege of non-combatants ; but there are those in whom 
the sense of impunity breeds the cowardly courage of the virago. 

“In reckoning the resources of the female politicians, there is one 
which can by no means be left out. None know better than woman the 
potency of feminine charms aided by feminine arts. The woman ‘ inside 
politics ’ will not fail to make use of an influence so subtle and so strong 
and of which the management is peculiarly suited to her talents. If — 
and the contingency is in the highest degree probable — she is not gifted 
with charms of her own, she will have no difficulty in finding and using 
others of her sex who are. If report is to be trusted, Delilah has already 
spread her snares for the Congressional Samson; and the power before 
which the wise fail and the mighty fall has been invoked against the 
sages and heroes of the Capitol. When ‘ woman ’ is fairly ‘ inside 
politics ’ the sensation press will reap a harvest of scandals more lucrative 
to itself than profitable to public morals. And as the zeal of one class of 
female reformers has been and no doubt will be largely directed to their 
grievances in matters of sex, we shall have shrill-tongued discussions of 
subjects which had far better be let alone. 

“ It may be said that the advocates of female suffrage do not look to 
political women for the purifying of politics, but to the votes of the sex at 
large. The two, however, cannot be separated. It should be remembered 
that the question is not of a limited and select female suffrage, but of a 
universal one. To limit would be impossible. It would seek the broadest 
areas and the lowest depths, and spread itself through the marshes and 
malarious pools of society.” ^ 

That some women are political and many men are not, is as 
true as it is that some men are unmilitary and a few women are 
Amazons. But this does not alter the general fact; and it is 
upon general facts that political institutions must be founded. 

Mill, appealing to history, bids us mark that so excellent a 
judge of practical ability as Charles V. set women to govern 
the Netherlands. Charles V. appointed women because he 
had no males in his family to appoint. It was in fact this 


1 Minority Beport, p. 24. 


220 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


failure of males in dynasties, combined with the superstition 
of hereditary right, that led to the introduction in Europe of 
what John Knox called ‘Hhe monstrous regiment of women.” 
Charleses experiment was not happy, since the result was the 
revolt of the Netherlands. Blanche of Castile, is also cited by 
Mill. She appears to have been a woman of masculine quali¬ 
ties, not to say a virago, to have held her excellent but rather 
weak-minded son in complete subjection, and to have governed 
with vigour and judgment as his vicegerent; but there were 
evidently two sides to her character; which of them prevailed 
on the whole, we have hardly evidence enough to decide. 

If we are to go to history, to history let us go; only remem¬ 
bering that the examples are those of queens regnant, or 
women placed by their circumstances in positions of power, and 
that they afford no certain indication of what women would be 
when they had climbed to power as demagogues after passing 
through the party mill. 

In England, the women who have wielded power legally or 
practically have been Matilda, the claimant of the crown 
against Stephen, about whom we know little, but who seems 
to have injured her party by her arrogance; Eleanor, the jeal¬ 
ous and intriguing Queen of Henry II., who laboured to secure 
the succession for John, and whose own record is not fair; 
Isabella, the paramour of Mortimer, and with him guilty of 
the murder of Edward II.; Margaret, the Queen of Henry VI., 
whose violence and favouritism helped to bring on the War of 
the Roses; Mary, of whom it need only be said that she was 
probably not a bad woman, but misled by influences to which 
her sex is specially exposed; Elizabeth; Henrietta Maria, who 
by her feminine violence had, like Margaret of Anjou, no small 
share in plunging the country into civil war; and Queen Anne, 
who, under personal influences and at the instigation of a 
favourite waiting-woman, upset a great ministry and deprived 
the country of the fruits of victory, while, had she lived 
longer, her fondness for her family would have probably led to 
an attempt to restore the Stuarts. The star is Elizabeth. But 
Elizabeth's reputation for anything except the arts of popu- 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


221 


larity, in which she was supreme, has suffered terribly by the 
researches of Motley and other recent writers. Her deceit¬ 
fulness, perfidy, and ingratitude to those who had served her 
and the country best, were pretty well known, as were her 
vanity and her coquetry. But her reputation for statesman¬ 
ship is now greatly reduced, and it is clear that the country 
was saved not by her, but by itself; from the Armada it was 
saved in her despite. Mr. Froude, who set out as her fervent 
admirer, has in the end to say that her conduct in the transac¬ 
tion which preceded the sailing of the Armada would alone 
suffice to disqualify Elizabeth from being cited as an example 
of the capacity of female sovereigns.” And when the country 
was saved, whom did the Queen select for the honour? Whom 
did she prefer on this and all other occasions above the great 
servants of the State? The good-looking but worthless Leices¬ 
ter, ^‘infamed,” as Burleigh said he was, ^^by the death of his 
wife.” Her ungrateful persecution of the Puritans in the 
latter part of her reign sowed the wind from which her 
unhappy successors reaped the whirlwind. She had the good 
fortune to be the crowning figure of an heroic age, and her sex 
threw about her a romantic halo, the brightness of which was 
enhanced by the calamities, partly her bequest, which ensued. 

In France the more recent list is Catherine de Medici, whose 
name suffices; Anne of Austria, who was in the able hands of 
Mazarin; Madame de Maintenon, to whose female piety France 
owed the revocation of the Edict of Hantes, while to her ten¬ 
derness for the Catholic Stuarts it owed a great war; Madame 
de Pompadour, whose name again suffices; Marie Antoinette, 
who, besides helping to dismiss Turgot and to complete the 
ruin of French finances by plunging France into the war of 
the American Kevolution, did so much to bring on the crash of 
the French Kevolution that her misdeeds were scarcely washed 
out by her tears. The story is closed by the influence, partly 
religious, partly dynastic and domestic, which, Frenchmen say, 
made the Franco-German war and finished the work by interfer¬ 
ing with its conduct in the interest of the dynasty and deterring 
the Emperor and his army from falling back on Paris. 


222 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


Isabella of Castile graced her crown and formed a noble 
queen of chivalry in the war against the Moors. As a ruler, 
she had Ferdinand at her side. That it was to her feminine 
instinct that the genius of Columbus was revealed, recent 
researches have made less certain than it is that her piety 
established the Inquisition in Castile, and that great numbers 
of persons were burned by it in her reign. 

Monuments of a female influence over government more 
certainly beneficent were the crosses which Edward I. erected 
in memory of the Queen who seems to have softened his 
sternness with her love, while she displayed the beauty of 
affection on the throne. England also owes a debt of gratitude 
to Caroline of Brunswick, by whose unambitious support Wal¬ 
pole, the best statesman of an unheroic time, was kept in power. 

Nothing need be said about queens nominally regnant who 
have reigned but not governed, and whose influence has been 
happily exerted in the social sphere which all admit to be the 
realm of woman. 

Queen Victoria, however, is often cited as a proof that a 
woman can rule an Empire without male help. What says 
Queen Victoria herself ? “ Lord Melbourne was very useful to 

me, but I can never be sufficiently thankful that I passed 
safely through those two years to my marriage. Then I was 
in a safe haven, and there I remained for twenty years. Now 
that is over, and I am again at sea, always wishing to consult 
one who is not here, groping by myself, with a constant sense 
of desolation. ^ 

Suppose now that a crisis should come in this political 
struggle, as conceivably it may, laying a strain on the personal 
force and resolution of the wearer of the British crown. Sup¬ 
pose a Eadical majority should demand the destruction of the 
House of Lords by a swamping creation of Peers. Could a 
lady be advised or expected to do anything which would expose 
her to danger or annoyance even in the utmost necessity of 
the State? 

1 The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley^ D.D., late 
Dean of Westminster, by Rowland E. Prothero, M.A., Vol. II., p. 127. 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


223 


Mill has told us that Begums have shone as rulers in India. 
He was in the India House and his authority is good, though 
he does not give the names. It is hardly credible that a 
woman brought up in a Zenana should be a great ruler, but she 
might be better than a hog or a tiger. Not all Begums have 
escaped the common influence of the Durbar. We have one, 
styled a heroine, making away successively with her father-in- 
law, her husband, and her son, because they stood in her way, 
enrolling cut-throats, and practising corruption as freely as 
any male.^ The superiority can hardly be such as to give 
much assurance of safety in revolutionising the relations be¬ 
tween the sexes. 

On the whole, experience apparently so far fails to show 
that the introduction of women into politics would be likely 
to lead to any improvement of government or legislation suf¬ 
ficient to countervail the danger of misdirecting the aspira¬ 
tions of woman and withdrawing her from her proper and 
transcendently important work as a wife and mother. 

The writer of this paper signed, in company with John 
Bright, John Stuart MilBs first petition in favour of suffrage 
for unmarried women. Mr. Bright, as well as the writer, was 
a good deal influenced by his respect and regard for Mill. 
Both of them afterwards changed their minds, and Bright 
spoke strongly against the measure. The writer found that 
the women of his acquaintance for whom he had most respect, 
and who seemed to him the best representatives of their sex, 
were opposed to the change, fearing that the position and 
privileges of women in general would be sacrificed to the 
ambition of a few. 

Since that time MilBs Autobiography has appeared, and has 
revealed the history of his extraordinary and almost portentous 
education, the singular circumstances of his marriage, his 
hallucination (for it surely can be called nothing else) as to 
the surpassing genius of his wife, and peculiarities of char¬ 
acter and temperament such as could not fail to prevent him 
from fully appreciating the power of influences which, whatever 
1 See C. Forjelt’s Our Beal Danger in India, p. 39. 


224 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


our philosophy may say, reign and will continue to reign 
supreme over questions of this kind. To him marriage was a 
union of two philosophers in the pursuit of truth, and wedded 
life was- intellectual intercourse. In his work on ^^The Sub¬ 
jection of Women” not only does he almost leave maternity 
out of sight, but sex and its influences seem hardly to be 
present to his mind. Of the distinctive excellence and beauty 
of the female character, or of the conditions essential to its 
preservation, it does not appear that he had formed any idea, 
though he dilates on the special qualities of the female 
understanding. 

Mill has allowed us to see that his opinions as to the politi¬ 
cal position of women were formed early in his life, probably 
before he had studied history rationally, perhaps before the 
rational study of history had come into existence. The con¬ 
sequence, with all deference to his great name be it said, is 
that his historical presentment of the case is fundamentally 
unsound. He and his disciples represent the lot of the 
woman as having always been determined by the will of the 
man, who, according to them, has willed that she should be 
the slave, and that he should be her master and tyrant. 
“ Society, both in this [the case of marriage] and other cases, 
has preferred to attain its object by foul rather than by fair 
means; but this is the only case in which it has substantially 
persisted in them even to the present day.” This is Milks 
fundamental assumption; and from it, as every rational student 
of history is now aware, conclusions utterly erroneous as well 
as injurious to humanity must flow. The lot of the woman 
has not been determined by the will of the man, at least in 
any considerable degree. The lot both of the man and of the 
woman has been determined from age to age by circumstances 
over which the will of neither of them had much control, and 
which neither could be blamed for accepting or failing to 
reverse. Mill and his disciples assume that the man has 
always willed that he should himself enjoy political rights, 
and that the woman should be his slave; forgetting that it is 
only in a few countries that man does enjoy political rights, 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


225 


and that, even in those few countries, freedom is the birth 
almost of yesterday. It may probably be said that the number 
of men who have really and freely exercised the suffrage up to 
the present time is not very much greater than the number of 
those who have in different ages and in various ways laid down 
their lives or made personal sacrifices of other kinds in bring¬ 
ing elective government into existence. 

In the early stages of civilisation the family was socially 
and legally, as well as politically, a unit. Its head repre¬ 
sented the whole household before the tribe, the State, and all 
persons and bodies without; while within he exercised absolute 
power over all the members, male as well as female, over his 
sons as well as over his wife and daughters. On the death of 
the head of a family his eldest son stepped into his place, and 
became the representative and protector of the whole house¬ 
hold, including the widow of the deceased chief. This system, 
long retained in conservative Eome, was there the source of 
the national respect for authority, and, by an expansion of 
feeling from the family to the community, of the patriotism 
which produced and sustained Koman greatness. Its traces 
lingered far down in history. It was not male tyranny 
that authorised a Tudor queen to send members of the royal 
household to the Tower by her personal authority as the mis¬ 
tress of the family, without regard to the common law against 
arbitrary imprisonment. Such a constitution was essential to 
the existence of the family in primitive times; without it the 
germs of nations and of humanity would have perished. To 
suppose that it was devised by the male sex for the gratifica¬ 
tion of their own tyrannical propensities, would be most 
absurd. It was at least as much a necessity to the primitive 
woman as it was to the primitive man. It is still a necessity 
to woman in the countries where the primitive type of society 
remains. What would be the fate of a female Bedouin if she 
were suddenly invested with Woman^s Eights, and emanci¬ 
pated from the protection of her husband? 

That the present relation of women to their husbands liter¬ 
ally has its origin in slavery, and is a hideous relic of that 

Q 


226 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


system, is a theory which Mill sets forth in language such as, 
if it could sink into the hearts of those to whom it is addressed, 
might turn affection to bitterness, and divide every household 
against itself. Yet this theory is without historical founda¬ 
tion. It seems indeed like a figure of invective heedlessly 
converted into history. Even in the most primitive times, 
and those in which the subjection of the woman was most 
complete, the wife was clearly distinguished from the slave. 
The lot of Sarah is different from that of Hagar; the authority 
of Hector over Andromache is absolute, yet no one can con¬ 
found her position with that of her handmaidens. The Eoman 
matron who sent her slave to be crucified, the Southern matron 
who was the fierce supporter of slavery, were not themselves 
slaves. Whatever may now be obsolete in the relations of 
husband and wife is not a relic of slavery, but of primitive 
marriage, and may be regarded as at worst an arrangement 
once indispensable which has survived its hour. Where real 
slavery has existed, it has extended to both sexes, and it has 
ceased for both at the same time. Even the Oriental seclusion 
of women, perhaps the worst condition in which the sex has 
ever been, has its root not in the slave-owning propensity so 
much as in jealousy, a passion which, though extravagant and 
detestable in its excessive manifestation, is not without an 
element of affection. The most beautiful building in the East 
is that which Shah Jehan raised as the monument of a beloved 
wife. Is it possible that an American lady living in Paris on 
the fruits of her husband^s toil at New York, or looking on 
while a porter at Saratoga toils beneath her colossal trunk, 
should deem herself a slave? 

If the calm and philosophic nature of Mill is ever betrayed 
into violence, it is in his denunciations of the present institu¬ 
tion of marriage. He depicts it as a despotism full of mutual 
degradation, and fruitful of no virtues or affections except the 
debased virtues and the miserable affections of the master and 
the slave. The grossest and most degrading terms of Oriental 
servitude are used to designate the relations of husband and 
wife throughout the book. A husband who desires his wife^s 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


227 


love is only seeking to have in the woman most nearly con¬ 
nected with him, not a forced slave, but a willing one; not a 
slave merely, but a favourite.’^ Husbands have, therefore, 
^^put everything in practice to enslave the minds of their 
wives.” If a wife is intensely attached to her husband, 
“exactly as much may be said of domestic slavery.” “It is a 
part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted 
gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible are 
called forth in human beings towards those who, having the 
power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily 
refrain from using their power.” Even children are only links 
in the chain of bondage. By the affections of women “are 
meant the only ones they are allowed to have, those to the men 
to whom they are connected, or to the children who constitute 
an additional and indefeasible tie between them and a man.” 
Such a description of British matrimony seems to be scarcely 
sane. The Jesuit is an object of sympathy because he is the 
enemy of the domestic tyrant, and it is assumed that the hus¬ 
band can have no motive but the love of undivided tyranny for 
objecting to being superseded by an intriguing interloper in 
his wife^s affections. As though a wife would regard with 
complacency, say a female spiritualist installed beside her 
hearth! MilPs book, written with his usual clearness and 
impressiveness, having been the manifesto, has remained the 
manual of the movement. It is therefore still necessary to 
deal with it, nor can there be anything invidious, as some of 
his admirers seem to have fancied, in reviewing it by the light 
of the Autobiography. For what purpose is the life of a 
philosopher published if it is not to enable us better to under¬ 
stand his works? The book might poison marriage if it were 
not read with a knowledge of the influence under which it was 
written. Mill himself seems at last to start from the picture 
which he has drawn and to be inclined to qualify it. But he 
does this faintly and too late. 

If, in this most imperfect world, woman, through the 
changeful ages, has, like her partner, had much to undergo, 
and too often at her partner's hands, she has also had advan- 


228 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


tages which she would have been sorry to forfeit, and which 
she would be sorry to forfeit now. She has sat safe in her 
home while her partner was toiling, hunting, battling with the 
sea, fighting for her abroad. By her partner's labour and with 
peril of his life the earth has been subdued for her and made 
fit for her habitation. When she complains that she has been 
treated as a toy, does she mean that she has been wronged 
because man has taken most of the rough and hard work to 
himself? War has comparatively spared her; public justice 
has been lenient to her; in a shipwreck she has been put first 
into the boat, while the slave to whom she now likens herself 
has been thrown overboard to save the provisions. In civilised 
countries she is on all occasions served and considered first; 
special provisions are made for her comfort and convenience. 
Is this the lot of a slave, or of one even more miserable than 
a slave? 

Sometimes woman has had man^s hard work to do. But this 
has been mostly in times of special need or of general bar¬ 
barism, and the revulsion which any such employment of her 
causes, denotes her general immunity. The Red Indian used 
his mate as a beast of burden. But the Red Indian was a 
savage. Even he, however, might have pleaded special need. 
The hunter, by the product of whose chase the wigwam was 
fed, would have been spoiled, his powers of endurance would 
have been reduced, and the keenness of his sense would have 
been impaired, by heavy domestic labour. 

Marriage has risen in character with the general progress of 
civilisation from the primeval contract of force or purchase to 
a free contract, of a contract generally of love. Primeval 
practice was not regulated by the will of those generations, 
but by primeval circumstance, and the improvement of the 
marriage tie has come, as all other great improvements of 
human relations have come, in the course of secular evolution. 
It was something when the passions of the male were subjected 
to a regular and lasting bond of any kind. If women are now 
to be made independent of marriage, which appears to be the 
aim of some of their champions, they will be made indepen- 


WOMAN SUEFKAGE. 


229 


dent of that in which the happiness of a creature formed for 
affection usually consists. Perhaps if they take advantage of 
their independence many of them will owe their champions 
but scanty thanks in their old age. 

The anomalies in the property law affecting married women, 
to which remedial legislation has recently been directed, are, 
like whatever is obsolete in the relations between the sexes 
generally, not deliberate iniquities, but survivals. They are 
relics of feudalism or of still more primitive institutions incor¬ 
porated by feudalism; and while the system to which they 
belonged existed they were indispensable parts of it, and must 
have been so regarded by both sexes alike. Any one who is 
tolerably well informed ought to be ashamed to represent them 
as the contrivances of male injustice. It is not on one sex 
only that the relics of feudalism have borne hard. 

The exclusion of women from professions is cited as another 
proof of constant and immemorial injustice. But what woman 
asked or wished to be admitted to a profession a hundred or 
even fifty years ago? What woman till quite recently would 
have been ready to renounce marriage and maternity in order 
that she might devote herself to law, medicine, or commercial 
pursuits? The demand is probably in some measure connected 
with an abnormal and possibly transient state of things. The 
expensiveness of living in a country where the fashion is set 
by millionaires, combined with the overcrowded condition of 
the very callings to which women are demanding admission, 
has put extraordinary difficulties in the wa|r of marriage. 
Many women are thus left without an object in life, and they 
naturally try to open for themselves some new career. The 
utmost sympathy is due to them, and every facility ought 
in justice to be afforded them; though unhappily the addition 
of fresh competitors for subsistence to a crowd in which some 
are already starving will be as far as possible from removing 
the real root of the evil, to say nothing of the risk which a 
woman runs in committing herself irrevocably to an undo¬ 
mestic calling, and closing against herself the gate of married 
life. But the demand, as has already been said, is of yester- 


230 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


day, and probably in its serious form is as yet confined to the 
countries in which impediments to early marriage exist. It is 
not always easy to distinguish the serious demand from a pas¬ 
sion for emulating the male sex which is hardly more respec¬ 
table in women than the affectation of feminine tastes and 
habits would be in a man. With regard to the profession of 
law, indeed, so far as it is concerned with the administration 
of justice, there is, as was said before, and while human 
emotions retain their force always will be, a reason, independent 
of the question of demand, for excluding women, at least for 
excluding one of the two sexes from jury trials. The influence 
of a pretty advocate appealing to a jury, perhaps in behalf of 
a client of her own sex, would not have seemed to Mill at all 
dangerous to the integrity of public justice; but most people, 
and especially those who have seen anything of sentimental 
causes in the United States, or even in more phlegmatic Eng¬ 
land, will probably be of a different opinion. 

What has been said as to the professions is equally true of 
the universities, which were schools for the professions. A few 
years ago, what girl would have consented to leave her home 
and mingle with male students? What girl would have 
thought it possible that she could go through the whole of the 
medical course with male companions of her studies? Even 
now what is the amount of settled belief in ‘‘co-education”? 
What would be said to a young man who applied for admission 
in the name of that principle at the door of any female college? 
Without arraigning what has been done, those whose duty 
it is may reconsider with due deliberation the two distinct 
questions — whether it is desirable that the education of both 
sexes shall be the same, and whether it is desirable that the 
young men and the young women of the wealthier classes 
shall be educated together in the universities. Beneath the 
first question lies the still deeper question whether it is 
good for humanity that woman, who has hitherto been the 
helpmate and the complement, should become, as the leaders 
of the Woman^s Eights movement evidently desire, the rival 
and competitor of man. Both she cannot bej and it is by no 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


231 


means clear that in deciding which she shall be the aspirations 
of the leaders of this movement coincide with the interests of 
the sex. Marriage, if that is to be considered, is surely more 
enriched by diversity than by uniformity of acquirements 
on the sides of the two partners, universal accomplishment 
being possible to neither. 

If the education of women has hitherto been defective, so 
has that of men. We are now going to do our best to improve 
both. Surely no accomplishment in the acquisition of which 
woman has been condemned to spend her time could well be 
less useful than that of writing Greek or Latin verses has been 
to the generality of male students. That the education of 
woman has hitherto been lighter than that of men is no proof 
that for the purposes of woman^s destination it has been worse. 
Among other things, it is to be considered whether the children 
would be healthy if the brain of the mother, as well as that of 
the father, were severely tasked. One medical authority at 
least holds that the principal cause of the increasing avoidance 
and prevention of child-bearing in the United States is the 
physical and nervous deterioration of the women, which, in 
his opinion, is largely due to the severe strain of modern life 
and education.^ That the comparative absence of works of 
creative genius among women is due entirely to the social 
tyranny which has excluded, or is supposed to have excluded, 
them from literary or scientific careers, cannot be said to be 
self-evident. The case of musical composition, often cited, 
seems to suggest that there is another cause, and that the career 
of intellectual ambition is in most cases not likely to be hap¬ 
pier than that of domestic affection, though this is no reason 
why the experiment should not be fairly tried. Perhaps the 
intellectual disabilities under which women have laboured, 
even in the past, have been somewhat overstated. If Shelley 
was a child to Mrs. Mill, as Mr. Mill says, no social disa¬ 
bilities” hindered Mrs. Mill from publishing poems which 
would have eclipsed Shelley. The writer once heard an 

1 Annals of the, American Academy of Political and Social Science^ 
July, 1894, p. 66. 


232 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


American lecturer of eminence confidently ascribe the licen¬ 
tiousness of English fiction in the early part of the last century 
to the exclusion of women from literary life. The lecturer 
forgot that the most popular novelist of that period, and cer¬ 
tainly not the least licentious, was Mrs. Aphra Behn. This 
lady’s name suggests the remark that as the relations of the 
sexes have been the most intimate conceivable, the action of 
character has been reciprocal, and the level of moral ideas and 
sentiments for both pretty much the same. 

Mill, seeing that the man is the stronger, seems to assume 
that the relations between man and woman must always have 
been regulated by the law of the strongest. But strength is 
not tyranny. The protector must always be stronger than the 
person under his protection. A mother is overwhelmingly 
superior in strength to her infant child, and the child is com¬ 
pletely at her mercy. The very highest conception that 
humanity has ever formed, whether it be founded in reality or 
not, is that of power losing itself in affection. St. Paul (who, 
on any hypothesis as to his inspiration, is an authoritative 
expositor of the morality which became that of Christendom) 
affirms with perfect clearness the essential equality of the 
sexes and their necessary relations to each other as the two 
halves of humanity. Yet he no less distinctly ratifies the 
unity of the family, the authority of its head, and the female 
need of that headship; a need which, supposing it to be 
natural, has nothing in it more degrading than the need of 
protection.^ 

Subjection is a word of sinister import, and Mill, in adopt¬ 
ing it, prejudices the question. Subordination, or obedience, 
where it is necessary, implies no disparagement. Nothing 
grates on ordinary feelings when Beatrice, in “Much Ado 
about Nothing,” says that she “will tame her wild heart to 
the hand ” of the man whom she is to wed. Not the soldier 
only, but most of us have some one whom we are bound to 
obey, and whom, it being necessary, we obey without humilia¬ 
tion. A head of the family there must be if there is not to 

11 Cor. xi., 7-12 ; Eph. v., 22-33 ; Col. iii., 18. 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


233 


be domestic anarchy. Children must know to whom their 
obedience is due. Mill proposes that the authority shall be 
divided between the husband and wife in the marriage con¬ 
tract, and that the subjects in which each is to be supreme 
shall be set out in a schedule; but he has not given us a draft 
of such a contract. He had himself no children. In the 
whole of this movement of sexual revolution the family, though 
it may not, with anyone but a Nihilist, be the object of inten¬ 
tional or conscious attack, is practically threatened with dis¬ 
solution. One Utopian reformer, as we have seen, proposes not 
only that the wife shall be made independent of the husband, 
but that the children shall be made independent of the parents. 

“Enfranchise women,’’ says Mr. Blair’s Report, “or this 
Republic will steadily advance to the same destruction, the 
same ignoble and tragic catastrophe, which has engulfed the 
male republics of history.” This seems to imply a new read¬ 
ing of history, according to which republics have owed their 
fall to their masculine character. The Greek republics were 
overwhelmed by the Macedonian monarchy, their surrender to 
which was assuredly not due to excess of masculine force. 
The Roman republic was converted by the vast extension of 
Roman conquest into a military empire. The city republican¬ 
ism of the Middle Ages was crushed by the great monarchies. 
The short-lived Commonwealth of England owed its overthrow 
to causes which certainly had nothing to do with sex. The 
Swiss republic, the American republic, the French republic 
still live, so do several constitutional monarchies, including 
Great Britain and her colonies, which are republics in all but 
name. It is true that these commonwealths, though, we may 
hope, less directly threatened with the wrath of heaven than 
the report assumes them to be, are yet not free from peril; but 
their peril apparently lies in the passions, the giddiness, the 
anarchical tendencies of the multitude, and would hardly be 
averted by opening another floodgate and letting in all at once 
the full tide of feminine emotion. 

Woman, if she becomes a man, will be a weaker man. Yet 
she must be prepared to resign her privileges as a woman. 


234 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


Privilege and equality at once she cannot hope to have. To 
don the other sex she must doff her own, a process in which she 
will run some risk of ceasing to be, or at least to be deemed, 
the ^‘angelic portion of humanity.” For the time, perhaps, 
the ancient sentiment might linger; but the total change of 
relations would in the end bring a change of feeling. Chivalry 
depends on the acknowledged need of protection, and what is 
accorded to a gentle helpmate would not be accorded to a rival. 
Man would not be bound nor inclined to treat with tenderness 
and forbearing the being who was jostling with him in all the 
walks of life, wrangling with him in the law courts, wrestling 
with him on the stump, manoeuvring against him in elections, 
haggling with him on ’Change or in Wall Street. Take mere 
sex apart from character, and there will be nothing in the female 
of the human species more than in the female of any other 
species to command our respect or devotion. Aphrodite, in 
her heart, perhaps flatters herself that her Cestus will preserve 
her privilege, while she gains the advantage of equality. So 
much poetry has been addressed to her that she may well be 
excused for not forming a prosaic estimate of the probable 
results. But the outspoken Schopenhauer has told her that 
beauty is rarer in her sex than in the other. It takes more to 
make a beautiful woman than a handsome man. Of this we 
may be sure, that the attractions of women generally depend 
upon their being women. Mrs. Mill, be it observed, remained 
a woman. If she had put on her wig and gown to go into 
court and cross-examine witnesses, or had stood against her 
husband for Westminster, we should have seen the great 
experiment really tried. That she has had social advantages 
while she has lain under political disabilities, woman, espe¬ 
cially in America, can hardly deny; her sex has been an object 
of respect, sometimes of a worship almost fatuous, irrespective 
of her personal qualities. This is partly traceable to histori¬ 
cal accident. Jonathan Oldbuck is a cynic, but he is not far 
wrong in saying that it was by the fantastic imagination of 
chivalry that Dulcineas were exalted into despotic goddesses. 
He might have added that Mariolatry had played its part. 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


236 


It is averred that women, unless they share political power, 
cannot take an interest in public affairs. It has even been 
said that they cannot read history. That they can not only 
read but write history experience' shows. It shows also that 
many of them do take interest in public affairs. Apart from 
politics the whole field of charity, benevolence, and social 
reform invites their action. In it they have produced a train 
of worthies such as Miss Nightingale, and the same field is pre¬ 
ferred by many of the best men, who shrink from the political 
arena in its present state. Politics, after all, are not the 
greatest part of life. It was under the despotism of a foreign 
conqueror that Christianity came into the world. 

The far western State of Wyoming, the mining State of 
Colorado, and New Zealand have made the experiment of 
Woman’s Suffrage. Let them fairly try it, and if the result 
is good, let the rest of the world follow. In every field of 
action, except that of politics, use is made of experiment. A 
new engine is tested before it is put on all the railways or into 
all the steamships. A new medicine, however promising, is 
tried in one or two cases before it is applied universally. If 
an airship were invented, aeronauts would be called upon to 
prove its safety before all the world ascended. But in politics 
sweeping changes are irrevocably made upon the strength of 
what even an advocate of the change, if he had any fairness of 
mind, would allow to be a mere balance of argument in its 
favour. Had extensions of the suffrage, or changes in the 
form of local government been tried in one or two districts or 
cities first, a pause of salutary reflection might have ensued. 
But political changes, for the most part, are the result of con¬ 
flict, not of reasoning; of the desire of a class or party for 
power, not of broad conviction as to the public good. Woman’s 
Suffrage is a change fraught with the most momentous results, 
not only to the commonwealth, but to the household. Let 
Wyoming, Colorado, and New Zealand give it a full trial. 
The success of the Wyoming experiment is publicly pro¬ 
claimed, and the universe is exhorted to go and do likewise 
by Wyoming, whose voice is that of the female voters. 


236 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


Other accounts are not so favourable,^ nor have neighbouring 
States, which must have the clearest view of the results, been 
induced to follow the example. In Nebraska, in spite of a 
laborious canvass headed by Miss Susan B. Anthony, Woman 
Suffrage was defeated by two to one.^ To Wyoming and Col¬ 
orado, Woman’s Suffrage in the United States remains confined. 
The New Zealand experiment will be more satisfactory, though 
New Zealand, having no warlike neighbours, does not run the 
same risk in emasculating her government which is run by 
a European State. If after effectual trial it appears from 
the experiments that legislation and government have become 
wiser, more far-sighted, and more just, without any detri¬ 
ment to the peace and order of the home, let the world 
follow the example, and be grateful to those by whom the first 
experiment was made. 

At the present juncture in Europe sexual revolution would 
be especially perilous. Among other things tendency to the 
personal ascendancy of great demagogues, which has shown 
itself as a result of the enfranchisement of masses ignorant of 
political principles and questions, could not fail to be aggravated 
by the enfranchisement of all the women, the inclination of the 
sex being to personal rather than constitutional government. 
In France, with Woman Suffrage, the Eepublic could hardly 
live. 

Mr. Blair’s Keport ends by saying that men can have no 
motive for refusing the suffrage to women but the selfish one 
of unwillingness to part with half of the sovereign power. 
Selfishness in this matter would undoubtedly be not only 
wickedness but folly. What is good for woman is good in the 
same measure for man, and ought not to be withheld. One 
lady in her evidence warns Congress, if it will not give way, 
that the wild enthusiasm of woman can be used for evil as well 
as good, and threatens in America a repetition of the scenes of 
the French Commune. More terrible even than this menace 
is the fear of doing an injury to man’s partner, and thereby a 

1 See the paper by Governor Crounse of Nebraska, North American 
Eeview, June, 1894. 2 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


237 


deeper injury to man himself. But the change ought to be 
proved good. Before man hands over the government to 
woman, he ought to be satisfied that he cannot do what is right 
himself. In an age of flabby ” sentiment and servile worship 
of change, we have had enough of weak and precipitate sur¬ 
renders. It was to weak and precipitate surrender that the 
world owed the French Bevolution and the deluge of calamity 
which followed. To man, as he alone could enforce the law, 
the sovereign power came naturally and righteously. Let him 
see whether he cannot make a just use of it, in the interest of 
his wife and children as well as in his own, before he sends in 
his resignation. 

But in the rage of the universal faction fight the voice of 
prudence is drowned, and the world is hurried from change to 
change, not by conviction, but by the exigencies and accidents 
of the party strife. A New Zealander, writing in the Fort¬ 
nightly Review,^ gives us his account of the way in which 
female suffrage was carried. Only a few “wild women,he 
says, so far as he by careful inquiry could ascertain, really 
desired it, though thousands were induced to sign the petition. 
But some Conservative politicians thought it would strengthen 
their party. The Prohibitionists — never caring what may 
happen to the commonwealth so long as they carry their own 
measure — were most strenuous in favour of the change. Thus 
the measure slipped through the House of Kepresentatives. 
It would, according to the writer, have been thrown out by the 
Legislative Council had not one or two of the members of that 
Council wished to embarrass the Ministry. So a measure 
“ which no one but a few fanatics and a few Conservative politi¬ 
cians really desired, and which at the least ninety-five per cent, 
of the population neither desired nor approved of was passed 
into law.’’ So it will be elsewhere, and a political change, 
far more momentous than any extension of the male fran¬ 
chise, will be forced on one community after another by the 
fanaticism of Prohibitionists, aided by the shifty politicians, 
and the desire or fear of votes. The reception of Wyoming as 
1 February, 1894. 


238 


QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 


a State with a female constitution was strongly resisted in 
Congress and was carried, it is believed, through the need felt 
by a political party of two more Senatorial votes. Every 
demand for an extension of the suffrage is pretty sure in like 
manner to prevail. When to all the existing masses of the 
electorate, with its medley of sections, interests, and agita¬ 
tions, has been added the whole female sex with emotions, 
passions, objects, and issues of its own, and with the new order 
of demagogism to which it is sure to give birth, the system of 
demagogic and party government will have reached its climax, 
and the world may be led to consider whether to escape con¬ 
fusion it will not be necessary to set up in one form or another 
a strong, stable, and impartial government. 








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Woman Suffrage not Demanded 


The Petition for it not Honestly Signed 
AND NOT Representative. 


To the Editor of the New York Times : 

The woman suffragists of New York State are claiming that 
suffrage should be forced upon unwilling women, because it is the 
voice of the people, and consequently, the voice of God. They 
claim to have signed to the voluminous papers that are annually 
presented to the Legislature 300,000 signatures. They admit that 
a proportion of those names are represented by the signature of one 
man. For instance, a labor organization of many hundred men is 
credited as having signed the petition through the secretary. This 
has been done in several instances. How were the other names 
obtained ? A fee was paid for the enrollment of each name ; i cent, 
2 cents, and in some instances, we are told, 3 cents per name was 
given. In a village in the interior part of the State several women 
have openly said that, although opposed to the extension of suffrage 
to women, they have signed their names to the suffrage petition 
through their desire to help the woman who was trying to earn a 
little money in this way. Merchants were not only cajoled, but 
threatened ; and so were women, if they refused to sign the petition. 
Many boys and girls of tender years affixed their signatures, as many 
older people did, “for the fun of it.” Ridicule and satire were used, 
where it could be used, against the women who were opposed to 
suffrage, and logic and sense were tried to be swept away by an 
avalanche of sophistry and fanaticism. 

“Women who pay taxes should vote,” was the war cry ; and 
when it was proved that the very large majority of women who pay 
taxes were opposed to the extension of unlimited suffrage to their 
sex, then the old cry of “ignorance” and “slavery” rang on the 




2 


ear. It was so ridiculously absurd to dub American women of the 
present age as either “ignorant’, or “slaves,” that the cry sank 
into silence through its own weakness. 

Now, regarding this “voice of the people” argument. Despite 
the fact that long petitions said to contain these many names have 
been presented to the Legislature of the State of New York, the fact 
that there are only t,6oo enrolled suffragists in a State where there 
are nearly 7,000,000 people, shows at once the weakness of that 
argument. It is currently reported that the women leaders in the 
suffrage movement have forgotten that women are to purify the 
political cesspools, and so have descended to threaten our legislators 
with the bugbear of a defeat, in case they try for re-election, if they 
prove to be opposed to allowing the question of women suffrage to go 
to the people to be voted upon. Now, as there are more than as many 
thousand enrolled anti-suffragists, as there are hundreds of suffragists 
in New York State, and as names are being added daily to the lists 
of anti-suffragists, the legislators—if they are governed by their fears 
of women—have more need of acting with the antis than against 
them, for, while the anti-suffragists would deplore the necessity for 
lowering themselves to the level of corrupt political methods, they 
would, nevertheless, feel themselves bound to defend their cause 
against the methods employed by the suffragists, even if they were 
forced to use the same weapons. 

The suffragists say that the antis are afraid of allowing the 
question to go to the people to decide. That is not so. If it were 
decided by men at the polls, the defeat would be more overwhelming 
than it was in Massachusetts. But the antis believe the question of 
women’s voting should be decided by women themselves, and, as the 
burden of proof lies with the suffragists, that until it can be shown 
by them that a large majority of women of voting age desire the 
franchise, no notice of the matter should be taken by our legislators. 
No possible good would be derived by submitting the question to the 
people. If it would, then Massachusetts is no criterion for New 
York, for, despite the overwhelming defeat that the suffragists met 
at the polls last fall in Massachusetts, they are to-day urging their 
claims as fiercely as ever and demanding that the people be allowed to 
again vote upon the question. They are boasting that, although the 
Massachusetts Legislature this year refused to give them a chance of 
a hearing before a special committee, they have forced a hearing 
through three committees. They already have had a hearing before 


3 

the Committee on Election Laws and the Committee on Constitutional 
Amendments, besides flooding the legislative halls with petitions and 
leaflets. They acknowledge that they are working on the principal 
that the Cuban insurgents have followed, viz., to tire out their 
opponents. But, while the anti-suffragists receive no pay for their 
services, they are in the fight through honest conviction, and will 
stay in it to the end. They can not be worried or fretted or ridiculed 
for their “ignorance” out of the way. They object to the publicity 
and added burden, but they submit, knowing that they are working 
for the good of the State as well as all womankind. 

Albany, March i 8 g 6 . 


A. P. P. 







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WOMAN SUFFRAGE DEFEATS. 


To the Editor of The Argiis : 

A syndicate letter is going the rounds of the press giving what 
is termed the gains made by the women suffragists during the last 
fift}^ years. It has been clearly proven in “Woman and the 
Republic” that neither Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton or Miss Anthony 
knew the names of the proposers and defenders of the bill that 
opened the way in New York for all the liberal legislation that has 
followed. During the constitutional convention of 1894, Mr. Church, 
of Alleghany, presented an appeal from his county asking for the 
suffrage. He said in part : “Beginning in 1848, the male citizens of 
the State of New York, not at the clamor of the women, as I under¬ 
stand it, but actuated by a sense of justice, began to remove the dis¬ 
abilities under which women labored at that time. Gradually, from 
that time on, the barriers had been stricken away until, in 1891, I 
believe, the last impediments were removed.” 

A careful study of the laws of our State shows that the change 
in the laws did not originate in the suffrage movement ; that change 
of law has not been so much sought for by the suffrage leaders, as a 
voice upon change of laws ; that not so much demand has been 
made for better laws, as for woman suffrage ; that being held up to 
be the panacea for all woman’s wrongs. 

Women to-day in nearly every State of the Union stand on a 
par legally with men, or are raised upon a legal plane above men. 
Suffrage to be granted to women should only be considered from the 
standpoint first : Will the right to vote confer upon women any 
benefit from which she is now deprived? And second, will the 
State be benefitted by allowing all of its women to vote ? 

That these questions have been decided in the negative by the 
States below, is proof that the suffrage cry of “gain” is an empty 
nothing. These statistics are given from the time of the late pres¬ 
idential election. 

In Arizona, a woman suffrage bill was defeated by the Assembly. 
In California a constitutional amendment conferring the full rights 



of suffrage upon women was defeated by the people at the election in 
November, 1896 ; and both branches of the I^egislature of 1897 
rejected a resolution to submit the question again to the people. 

In Connecticut the Legislature rejected all woman suffrage 
measures, including a bill to permit women to vote on the license 
question, and one allowing tax-paying women to vote upon questions 
involving the levying of taxes. 

In Delaware the constitutional convention refused to strike the 
word “male” from the election clause of the new Constitution. 
Similar action was taken with a motion to make the clause read 
“every citizen.” 

In Illinois it failed to be the one constitutional amendment 
possible to be adopted. 

In Indiana, the Supreme Court handed down a decision denying 
the claim that women have the right of suffrage under the existing 
Constitution. The courts held that the Constitution proceeds on the 
assumption that the suffrage is not an inherent or natural right; and 
that this is the assumption of the framers of all the constitutions in 
the land. 

In Iowa, a suffrage amendment to the Constitution was defeated. 

In Kansas, a bill to give women the right to vote for Presidential 
electors was reported adversely by the committee on elections, and 
the House refused to give it a place on the calendar for discussion. 

In Kentucky, a bill permitting women to vote for school officers 
and to be eligible to the office of school trustee was rejected. 

In Missouri, a resolution for a constitutional amendment con¬ 
ferring the suffrage upon women was defeated. 

In Massachusetts, a resolution providing for the submission of 
a constitutional amendment striking the word “male” from the 
Constitution was defeated ; also a bill to permit women to vote on 
the license question ; and propositions to confer municipal suffrage 
and presidential suffrage upon women were defeated. 

In Maine, the judiciary committee of the Legislature gave the 
petitioners for a municipal suffrage bill ‘ ‘ leave to withdraw. ’ ’ 

In Montana, the Legislature defeated a proposed constitutional 
amendment to confer the suffrage upon women. 

In Nebraska, the House defeated a resolution to submit a 
woman’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution ; and the Senate 
refused to consider a municipal suffrage bill. 

In Nevada, the Assembly defeated a woman suffrage bill. 


In New York, a resolution for a suffrage constitutional amend¬ 
ment was introduced into the Legislature, but defeated in the 
judiciary committee. A proposed woman’s suffrage provision in the 
Greater New York charter failed in the Legislature. 

In New Jersey, a proposed amendment to grant school suffrage 
to women was defeated. 

In Oklahoma, the House on January 25th, 1897, defeated by a 
decisive vote a bill to permit women to vote in the territory ; and on 
February i8th, reaffirmed the action. 

In Rhode Island, a resolution for a suffrage amendment to the 
Constitution was defeated. 

In Vermont, a bill to confer municipal suffrage upon women 
taxpayers was defeated. 

Woman suffrage bills were defeated also in Nova Scotia, in the 
British House of Commons, later in the House of Lords and still 
later in Australia. 

To this statement may be added the fact that the Assembly 
judiciary committee of New York voted against woman suffrage on 
February 2d, 1898. 

Mrs. W. WINSLOW CRANNBLL. 

Albany, Feb., 1898. 


■ * ■ ^ 


( 


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WOMAN SUFFRAGE DEFEATS. 


A syndicate letter is going the rounds of the press giving what 
is termed the gains made by the women suffragists during the last 
fifty years. It has been clearly proven in “Woman and the 
Republic” that neither Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton or Miss Anthony 
knew the names of the proposers and defenders of the bill that 
opened the way in New York for all the liberal legislation that has 
followed. During the constitutional convention of 1894, Mr. Church, 
of Allegany, presented an appeal from his county asking for the 
suffrage. He said in part: “Beginning in 1848, the male citizens of 
the State of New York, not at the clamor of the women, as I under¬ 
stand it, but actuated by a sense of justice began to remove the dis¬ 
abilities under which women labored at that time. Gradually from 
that time on, the barriers had been stricken away until, in 1891, I 
believe, the last impediments were removed.” 

A careful study of the laws of our State shows that the change 
in the laws did not originate in the suffrage movement; that change 
of law has not been so much sought for by the suffrage leaders, as a 
voice upon change of laws: that not so much demand has been 
made for better laws as for woman suffrage ; that being held up to 
be the panacea for all woman’s wrongs. 

To-day, in nearly every State of the Union, women stand on a 
par legally with men, or are raised upon a legal plane above men. 
Suffrage to be granted to women should be considered only from the 
standpoint, first: Will the right to vote confer upon woman any 
benefit from which she is now deprived ? And second, will the 
State be benefited by .allowing all of its women to vote ? 

That these questions have been decided in the negative by the 
States below, is proof that the suffrage cry of “gain” is “whistling 
in the dark.” These statistics are given from, and including 1894, 
—the year that the constitutional convention met in Albany and re¬ 
fused to submit to the people an amendment striking the word“male” 
from the Constitution. 


1894 , 

In Iowa, the Senate defeated a proposition to submit a suffrage 
constitutional amendment to the people. 

In Kansas, a constitutional amendment giving to women full 
rights of suffrage was defeated. 




Ill Massachusetts, a municipal suffrage bill was defeated in the 
Senate. 

In New York, the constitutional convention refused to submit 
to the people an amendment striking the word “male” from the 
Constitution. 

In Vermont, the House, after first acting favorably on a munic¬ 
ipal suffrage bill, rejected it, and subsequently refused to reconsider 
this action. 


1895 . 

In California, bills for municipal suffrage and for full suffrage 
for women failed ; but a joint resolution was passed submitting to the 
people in 1896 a suffrage constitutional amendment. 

In Connecticut, a municipal suffrage bill was rejected by the 
Senate. A Presidential suffrage bill did not reach a vote. 

In Illinois, a bill conferring upon women the right of township 
suffrage was twice defeated by the Senate. 

In Indiana, a constitutional amendment, striking the word 
“male” from the Constitution of the State, was introduced, but 
secured no support, and was not reported by the committee to which 
it was referred. 

In Kansas, a bill was passed by the Senate giving full suffrage 
to nine women who had petitioned for it, and who were named in 
the bill. The Senate also passed a bill conferring upon women the 
right to vote for Presidential electors. Neither bill reached a vote 
in the House. 

In Maine, the Senate defeated a bill conferring municipal suffrage 
upon women. 

In Massachusetts, the House refused a third reading to a bill 
conferring municipal suffrage upon women. An act was passed per¬ 
mitting all persons qualified to vote for school committee to express 
their opinion at the State election by voting Yes or No to the ques¬ 
tion “Is it expedient that municipal suffrage be granted to women ?” 
The question was decided in the negative at the polls, by a large 
vote. 

In Michigan, a proposition to submit a woman suffrage amend¬ 
ment to the Constitution was defeated. 

In Missouri, a resolution providing for submitting a woman 
suffrage amendment to the Constitution was defeated in the House 

In Montana, a resolution for the submission of a suffrage amend¬ 
ment was defeated in the Senate. 

In North Dakota, a bill conferring full suffrage upon women, 
subject to a referendum to the people was defeated by the House. 

In Rhode Island, a resolution for a constitutional amendment 
was referred to the next Legislature. 


In South Dakota, the House tabled a resolution providing for 
submitting a constitutional amendment to the people. 

In Washington, a resolution for a constitutional amendment was 
defeated by the house. 

In Wisconsin, a municipal suffrage bill was defeated in the 
Assembly. 


1896 * 

In California,a constitutional amendment conferring the full rights 
of suffrage upon women was defeated by the people. 

In Iowa, a suffrage amendment to the Constitution was defeated. 

In Massachusetts, the House of Representatives defeated a pro¬ 
posed woman suffrage amendment to the Constitution without calling 
for the Yeas and Nays. The House also defeated a bill to confer 
upon women the right to vote upon the License question ; and 
immediately after rejected by an overwhelming vote a bill to confer 
municipal suffrage upon women. 

In Rhode Island, a resolution for a suffrage amendment to the 
Constitution was defeated. 

In Vermont, a bill to confer municipal suffrage upon women 
taxpayers was defeated. 


1897 * 

In Arizona, a women suffrage bill was defeated by the Assembly. 

In California, both branches of the Legislature rejected a resolu¬ 
tion to again submit to the people a constitutional amendment 
conferring the full rights of suffrage upon women. 

In Connecticut, the Legislature rejected all women suffrage 
measures, including a bill to ‘permit women to vote on the license 
question, and one allowing tax-paying women to vote upon questions 
involving the levying of taxes. 

In Delaware, the constitutional convention refused to strike the 
word “male” from the election clause of the new Constitution. 
Similar action was taken with a motion to make the clause read 
“every citizen.” 

In Illinois, a proposed constitutional amendment conferring 
suffrage upon women, failed to be adopted by the Legislature. 

In Indiana, the Supreme Court handed down a decision denying 
the claim that women have the right of suffrage, under the existing 
Constitution. The Court held that the Constitution proceeds on the 
assumption that the suffrage is not an inherent or natural right; and 
that this is the assumption of the framers of all the constitutions in 
the land. 

In Kansas, a bill to give women the right to vote for Presidential 
electors was reported adversely by the committee on elections, and 


the House refused to give it a place on the calendar for discussion. 

In Kentucky, a bill permitting women to vote for school officers 
and to be eligible to the office of school trustee was rejected. 

In Missouri, a resolution for a constitutional amendment con¬ 
ferring the suffrage upon women was defeated. 

In Massachusetts, a resolution providing for the submission of 
a constitutional amendment striking the word “male from the 
Constitution was defeated ; also a bill to permit women to vote on 
the license question ; and propositions to confer municipal suffrage 
and presidential suffrage upon women were also defeated. 

In Maine, the judiciary committee of the Legislature gave the 
petitioners for a municipal suffrage bill “leave to withdraw.” 

In Montana, the Legislature defeated a proposed constitutional 
amendment to confer the suffrage upon women. 

In Nebraska, the House defeated a resolution to submit a 
woman’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution ; and the Senate 
refused to consider a municipal suffrage bill. 

In Nevada, the Assembly defeated a woman suffrage bill. 

In New York, a resolution for a suffrage constitutional amend¬ 
ment was introduced into the Legislature, but was defeated in the 
judiciary committee. A proposed woman suffrage provision in the 
Greater New York charter failed in the Legislature. 

In New Jersey, a proposed amendment to grant school suffrage 
to women was defeated. 

In Oklahoma, the House defeated by a decisive vote a bill to 
permit women to vote in the territory, and later reaffirmed its action. 

Woman suffrage bills were defeated in Nova Scotia, in the 
British House of Commons, later in the House of Lords, and still 
later in Australia. 


1898 . 

The Assembly Judiciary Committee of New York,on February 2, 
1898, killed in committee, the concurrent resolution to amend the 
Constitution by providing for woman suffrage. On March 3d, the 
suffragists forced a hearing before the Judiciary Committee, who 
again voted to not report favorably. 

In Massachusetts, three suffrage bills were defeated. On 
February 14, 1898, a bill to amend the State Constitution by striking 
out the word “male” was overwhelmingly defeated. The committee 
on constitutional amendments reported “leave to withdraw” on that 
petition. The election laws committee reported “leave to withdraw’^ 
on the petition for municipal and license suffrage, but the House 
decided to debate the license suffrage petition. The result was that 
tht^House of Representatives refused to substitute a license suffrage 
bill for the adverse report made by the committee. 


In Iowa, on Feb. 15, 1898, a bill to submit a suffrage amend¬ 
ment to the people was defeated in the Assembly. 

In Ohio, the Legislature defeated, on Feb. 28, 1898, a proposed 
submission to the people of an amendment to the Constitution giving 
full suffrage to women. 

In South Dakota, Nov. 1898, a proposed amendment to the 
Constitution conferring the elective franchise on women, was submitted 
to the people and defeated. 

In Vermont, Nov. 4, 1898, the House refused a third reading to 
the bill extending municipal suffrage to tax paying women. 

In Washington, Nov., 1898, a proposed amendment to the 
constitution conferring the elective franchise on women, was submitted 
to the people and defeated. 

In the Colony of Victoria, Australia, the woman, suffrage bill 
sent by the Assembly to the Legislative Council was defeated. 


1899 . 

In Arizona, a bill conferring full suffrage upon women was 
defeated in the Senate. 

In Arkansas, a bill conferring school suffrage upon women was 
defeated. 

In California, a bill granting school suffrage to women was 
defeated by the Governor who refused to sign the bill. 

In Connecticut, a bill granting municipal suffrage to women was 
defeated in both houses. 

In Georgia, efforts were made to introduce bills in the Legislature 
to exempt the property of women from taxation until they could vote 
and to provide for a convention to revise the Constitution so as to give 
equal suffrage rights with men, both of which failed. 

In Illinois, three bills were introduced in the Legislature grant¬ 
ing to women township suffrage, the right to vote by tax paying 
women on appropriations of public funds, and the right to vote for 
presidential electors and other offices, all of which failed. 

In Maine, a petition to the Legislature to exempt women from 
taxation was disposed of by the committee on taxation who voted 
that the petitioners have leave to withdraw. 

In Massachusetts, a concurrent resolution to strike out the word 
“male” from the Constitution, and a bill providing for municipal 
suffrage for women were both defeated. 

In Michigan, a joint resolution introduced into the Legislature 
asking for equal suffrage was defeated. 

In Montana, a bill to give the right of suffrage to tax paying 
women was defeated in the house. 

In Nevada, the Legislature rejected a resolution for a worn m 
suffrage amendment. 


In New Mexico, a bill introduced into the Legislature to grant 
school suffrage to women, was defeated. 

In New York, a bill conferring upon women the right to vote in 
towns and villages upon questions involving taxation was defeated in 
the Senate Judiciary Committee. A bill to provide for the compul¬ 
sory representation of women on Boards of Education was defeated. 

In North Carolina, no action was taken upon a bill giving the 
right to vote to tax paying women on questions involving taxation. 

In Oklahoma, a constitutional amendment giving full suffrage 
to women was defeated in the Senate. 

In Tennessee, a bill making women eligible to the office of notary 
public was defeated in the Senate. 

In Washington, a bill asking for an amendment to the Constitu¬ 
tion permitting women to vote on the proposition “Shall women be 
Enfranchised ? “ was defeated in committee. 

In West Virginia, a bill introduced in the Legislature asking for 
full suffrage for women was defeated. 

In Great Britain, Houses of Parliament rejected bill permitting 
election of women as councillors. 

At Melbourne, the Legislative Council of Victoria rejected the 
Woman’s Suffrage Bill. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, 

Albany, N. Y., September, 1899. Chairman Ex. Com. S. O. S. W. 

Albany, N. Y. 






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WOMAN SUFFRAGE DEFEATS. 


SUPPLEMENTAL. 


1900. 

In Iowa. — Proposed woman suffrage amendments to the State 
constitution were rejected by the legislature. 

In Massachusetts. — A municipal suffrage bill was defeated in 
the legislature. 

In New York. — Resolution adopted by the senate of New 
York: '^Resolved, That it is the sense of the senate that it is 
not expedient or advisable to attempt at this session any change 
in the constitution or statutes relating to woman suffrage.” 

In Ohio. — Proposed woman suffrage amendments to the State 
constitution were rejected by the legislature. 

In Oregon. — A proposed woman suffrage amendment to the 
State constitution was defeated at the polls. 

In South Dakota. — A proposed woman suffrage amendment 
to the State constitution was defeated by the people. 

In Vermont. — A woman suffrage taxpayers’ bill was defeated 
in the legislature. 

In Washington. — A proposed woman suffrage amendment to 
the State constitution was defeated by the people. 

190L 

In Alabama. — The constitutional convention rejected a propo¬ 
sition to admit women to the franchise in municipal elections 
called for the purpose of issuing bonds or incurring debt. 

In California. — Proposed constitutional amendments confer¬ 
ring suffrage upon women were defeated in the legislature. 

In Connecticut. — Municipal suffrage bills were defeated. 

In Indiana. — Proposed constitutional amendments conferring 
suffrage upon women were defeated in the legislature. 

In Kansas. — A presidential suffrage bill was defeated. 

In Massachusetts. — Municipal suffrage bills were defeated. 

In New Mexico. —A school suffrage bill was defeated. 

In Oregon. — Proposed constitutional amendments conferring 
suffrage upon women were defeated. 




2 


In South Dakota. — Proposed constitutional amendments con 
ferring suffrage upon women were defeated. 

In Wisconsin. — Proposed constitutional amendments confer¬ 
ring suffrage upon women were defeated. 

1902. 

In Connecticut. — The constitutional convention rejected a 
resolution giving women the full right of suffrage. 

In Iowa. — A joint resolution for the submission of an amend¬ 
ment to the people providing for woman suffrage was defeated in 
the house. 

In Kentucky.—The legislature repealed the law which had 
allowed women to vote for school officers in second-class cities. 

In Massachusetts. —Tax-paying and license suffrage bills and 
a resolve for a suffrage constitutional amendment were defeated. 

In New York. — A bill to give women in third-class cities the 
right to vote upon tax propositions failed, and the legislature* 
passed a bill repealing the law of 1892, which gave women in 
towns the right to vote for school commissioners, on the ground 
that it was unconstitutional. 

In Vermont.—The legislature rejected presidential suffrage 
and municipal suffrage bills, and refused to permit women to 
vote on the local option referendum. 

1903. 

In Arizona. — A bill conferring full suffrage upon women 
passed both branches of the legislature, but was vetoed by the 
governor on constitutional grounds. The bill was quite generally 
regarded as a Mormon measure, and if it had been adopted would 
unquestionably have heavily increased the Mormon vote. 

In Connecticut. — A tax-paying suffrage bill was defeated in 
the house, May 6, 105 to 60. 

In Illinois. — Bills were introduced to give women tax-payers 
the right to vote for tax officials and on tax matters and to give 
all women the right to vote for all officers over whose election 
the legislature has full control, including presidential electors; 
and a joint resolution for a suffrage constitutional amendment. 
None of these measures was favorably acted on. 

In Kansas. — A presidential suffrage bill was defeated. 

In Maine. — A bill was introduced to confer municipal suffrage 
upon tax-paying women. The committee on legal affairs declined 
to report it in that form, and eliminated the tax-paying feature. 


3 


Ill a new draft, conferring municipal suffrage upon all women, it 
was discussed in the house February 13, and defeated by a large 
majority. The senate, a week later, defeated the bill by a tie 
vote, the president of the senate breaking the tie by voting in the 
negative. 

In Massachusetts. — A tax-paying suffrage bill and a proposed 
constitutional amendment were defeated in the legislature. 

In Minnesota.—A presidential suffrage bill was introduced 
and failed. 

In Montana. — A resolution for the submission to the people 
of the suffrage question was killed in the senate by the casting 
vote of the lieutenant-governor. 

In Nebraska.—The movement for a constitutional amend¬ 
ment was abandoned, and the suffragists concentrated their 
efforts upon a bill to improve the property rights of women^ 
which was defeated by hostile amendments, which forced its 
withdrawal. 

In New Hampshire.— At the polls, March 10, a constitutional 
amendment giving women full suffrage was defeated. To carry 
the amendment should have received two-thirds of the vote cast. 
It fell far short of getting even a majority. The vote in favor 
was 14,162 against 21, 788. 

In New York. — The bill to give all tax-paying women in third- 
class cities the right to vote on propositions submitted at special 
tax elections, which was defeated in 1902, again failed. It was 
passed by the house, but failed in the senate committee. 

In Rhode Island. — A presidential suffrage bill was introduced^ 
but failed to receive even a committee report. 

In West Virginia. — A presidential suffrage bill was defeated. 

In Wisconsin. — A tax-paying suffrage bill was defeated. 

1904 * 

In Iowa. — A proposed constitutional amendment failed to 
receive the required constitutional majority in the house, the 
vote being 43 to 40; and in the .senate was indefinitely postponed. 

In Massachusetts. — The committee on election laws reported, 
10 to I, “leave to withdraw" on a municipal suffrage bill and 
unanimously on a municipal and license suffrage bill. The 
adverse report on the latter bill was accepted without debate in 
both houses ; that on the former was debated in the house, but 
was accepted without a roll-call, the supporters of the bill being 
unable to secure the 30 votes needed to demand it. 


4 


In New York. — Bills to allow women to vote for school officers 
and to vote on questions of raising and spending money in third- 
class cities failed. 

In Ohio. — A bill to allow women to vote at local option elec¬ 
tions failed. 

In Rhode Island.— The house, March 24, voted to indefinitely 
postpone a presidential suffrage bill. 

In Vermont,—A tax-paying municipal suffrage bill was 
defeated in the house. 


1005. 

During the year 1905 woman suffrage bills were defeated in 
California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Mon. 
tana. New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and West Virginia. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell. 

Albany, N. Y., June i, 1905. 


Officers of the Women’s Anti-Suffrage Association of the Third 
Judicial District, State of New York, Headquarters at Albany, 


N. Y.: ^ 

Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn . Honorary President. 

Mrs. George Douglas Miller . President. 

Mrs. William J. Wallace . First-Vice President. 

Mrs. Wm. Bayard Van Rensselaer . Secretary. 

Mrs. John H. Patterson . Treasurer. 


Executive Committee. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, Chairman. 

Mrs. Frederick Townsend, Mrs. Wm, Gorham Rice, 
Mrs. Joel R. Reed, Mrs. James F. Tracey, 

Mrs. William O. Stillman, Mrs. George W. Stedman, 
Miss Mary B. Fenimore-Cooper, and the principal officers, 

ex-officio. 

Leaflets may be obtained by addressing the Chairman of the 
Executive Committee, 9 Hall Place, Albany, N. Y* 









WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND WAGES 


WiLi, the; Ballot He:lp Womkn More Than it Does Men ? 


To the Editor of the Tribune : 

Sir :—The women who are agitatingthe question of giving suff¬ 
rage to women use as an argument to bring the w’orking women 
into sympathy with them the assertion that when women vote all 
women will be employed at increased wages. The fallacy of this 
argument is seen in the fact that so many men who are voters are 
idle, and also in the frequency of strikes ; for if wages and suffrage 
bore any relative value, there would be no men out of employment 
and no need of any united demand for an increase of wages or 
protest against their decrease. 

The question to be considered carefully is whether the condition 
of the working woman will be bettered by allowing her the franchise. 
Very few women reason ; very few are logical; sophistry takes the 
place of argument; and ridicule or invective are the weapons used 
in debate ; but facts continue to be facts. Political economists assure 
us that the wages of labor, in the sharp competition among laborers, 
will naturally ever gravitate toward the lowest point that will 
support life. It is an acknowledged fact that wages can be kept up 
only by keeping the demand a little beyond the supply ; that is, by 
narrowing competition. Everywhere the wage is regulated by 
demand and supply ; and as women enter the field as competitors 
with men, the result is always that instead of wages being 
increased for women, they are lowered for men. The reason of this 
is obvious, competition is closer among women than among men, and 
they can support themselves on lower wages. Many girls on leaving 




2 


school enter employment as a means of obtaining money for extra 
clothing or trinkets, and not as a means of livelihood. This is 
furnished them by the fathers and brothers whose places they are 
usurping and whose wages they are lowering. They are housed and 
fed ; they do not have to pay for rent, fire, light, food or ordinary 
clothing ; and so they accept prices for labor that no man who has 
to provide for a family could accept. When a merchant or a manu¬ 
facturer can fill all the vacant places with girls who are not only 
willing but anxious to work for a low wage, will they stop to ask if 
they had not better employ a man at an advanced price of labor 
because he can vote ? 

The question is asked seriously by a suffragist: ‘*Do you 
suppose that girls will accept the pittance they now receive in 
factories when they can vote?” I fail to see how the condition of 
things will be changed by the simple fact that so often in a year 
women will cast their ballots. The price of labor can not be made a 
legislative matter ; and if it could it could not be enforced. I am 
told that there is not a factory in existence in New York State to-day 
that has not a long roll of names of girls who are begging to be 
employed. How are these girls to regulate their pay if they can 
vote ? Are not the unemployed men thronging our streets to-day ? 
They can vote ; and they are only too willing to be employed at an}^ 
wages that may be offered. 

We will, for the sake of the argument, allow an impossibility, 
namely, that when women vote they will, by that simple reason, have 
accorded them increased wages. What then? Will our manufac¬ 
turers be willing to open their mills and factories, closed on account 
of their inability to pay the price of labor to-day, and sell their 
goods at a loss? Will they in Don Quixote spirit, fling open their 
doors for the ‘‘woman with a ballot in her hand?” Would it be 
wise, when so many men are unemployed and seeking labor, when 
communism, anarchy and sedition are rife in our midst, to throw 
into this seething mass the unknown quantity dubbed “woman 
suffrage, ’ ’ with all its power for evil as well as for good ? 

All professions, as well as other fields of labor, are open to 
women without the ballot. Why did they not avail themselves of 
these openings ? Women physicians in the State hospitals receive 
from $1,000 to $1,500 a year ; and yet the examination advertised 
in January by the New York State Civil Service Commission for 
women candidates failed for lack of applicants. 


3 

In literature women are as well paid as men for the same quality 
of work It is stated authoritatively that the largest price ever 
paid in this country for a manuscript was received by a woman. 
The magazines make no discrimination ; and the same rule obtains 
in art. On the stage and in music there is absolute wage equality 
of sex. If there is any distinction it is in favor of the woman. A 
fashionable dressmaker or milliner usually receives more extravagant 
profits than the tailor or hatter. 

The first woman admitted to the bar in New York State was a 
teacher in the State Normal College at Albany, and she is there still 
and has been there many years since receiving her diploma. She 
has never been heard of in court, and has evidently never tried to 
avail herself of the privileges of her legal profession. There have 
been several women physicians who have put out their shingle in 
Albany, and then, after a few years of unrewarded desire to be of 
service to women physically, have, like the Arab, folded their tents 
and quietly stolen away. 

Wages will never be a question of the ballot. Low wages will 
obtain as long as there is illegitimate competition ; and as long as 
young women enter the shop or factory as a bridge to span the 
interval between school and marriage, so long there will be unfair 
competition. The workers in large proportion see this. When the 
protest against striking the word “male” from the Constitution was 
being signed in Albany, hundreds of young women employed in 
shops and factories came to the headquarters to sign the protest. 
One of them said that a suffrage petition had been handed to her 
with the statement that if she could vote she would have higher 
wages ; to which she replied : “lam now receiving more than my 
father does, and he votes. ’ ’ 

It is a wise policy that dictates the holding of a known good 
rather than to lose it by trying to grasp an unknown and untried 
system that may prove to be an illusive phantom, or worse. 

Albany, March 7, i 8 g 6 . K. S. C. 


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Woman Suffragists’ Weakness. 


To the Editor of the New York Times : 

When the Massachusetts referendum relative to the expediency 
of granting suffrage to women was decided in the negative by an 
overwhelming majority, it was supposed that this voice of the people 
would settle the matter, for a time at least. The hopes of the home- 
loving women were defeated, however, for no sooner had the Massa¬ 
chusetts Legislature convened last winter than it was besieged by 
petitions, leaflets, and personal applications for the granting of presi¬ 
dential and municipal suffrage to women. It had been customary to 
appoint a legislative Suffrage Committee, but this the legislators 
wisely concluded was not necessary this year, as the people had 
decided the question. The suffragists, not to be beaten, then 
appeared before the Committee on Elections, the Municipal Elections 
Committee and the License Committee. The claims urged by them 
were the old theories that have been over and over proved to be 
fallacies, but there was a glimmering hope for the suffragists when 
the question of allowing women to vote for license was brought up. 

The pedestal upon which the women of this country and century 
have been placed through the chivalry of men seemed to hold a being 
so perfect that the liquor question would be settled by prohibitionary 
laws if women could have the suffrage ; but it was shown that out of 
I, I oo applications for license in Boston 491 names of women were 
copartners. The result was that all three bills were defeated. 

The kernel in the nut of the above statements is the fact that 
the suffragists of New York State propose presenting a bill allowing 
the present voting population of the State to vote upon the question 
of woman suffrage. 

They hope to influence those legislators who are opposed to 
woman suffrage with the fallacious hope that the people’s voice will 
settle the question. There is no question in the mind of any 
thoughtful person as to the result of the people’s vote. The men in 











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New York State would be governed by the wishes of the women to 
whom they owe allegiance, and the women who are opposed to suf¬ 
frage outrank the suffragists 4,000 to i. That this statement is not 
overdrawn is proved by the following quotation from Mr. Catt, hus¬ 
band of Mrs. C. Catt, the organizer of the National Suffrage Asso¬ 
ciation : “New York, with a white population of 6,000,000, has 
only 1,600 organized suffragists, or only 27 organized suffragists to 
each 100,000 of her white population.” 

Until the suffragists can show at least 1,000,000 women who 
desire suffrage, our legislators should obey the will of the great 
majority of the women, who are opposed to suffrage, and they should 
not sanction the action of the few clamoring women by even giving 
them a hearing. These women claim equal rights with men. They 
claim that they do not ask for chivalry or any courtesy denied to 
men. Would so slight a percentage of men who wished to revolu¬ 
tionize the suffrage policy be given a hearing year in and year out ? 
Would in not be said to them : “You presented your arguments to 
the Constitutional Convention ; they had there a full and even gen¬ 
erous hearing, and the convention decided by a large majority that it 
would not be wise or for the good of the State to grant your request; 
we believe the convention to have acted in accordance with the views 
of the people in general, and we refuse to act in opposition to what 
they thought best” ? 

This should be the position of our legislators regarding woman 
suffrage. 

Nkw York, April ii , i 8 p 6 . 


A. P. P. 





WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


One oe the Grievances of the Leading Advocates Thereof. 


From the Popular Science Mojithly. 


One of the grievances of the suffrage leaders lay in the fact that 
the literary women of the country would express no sympathy with 
their efforts. Poets and authors in general were denounced. Gail 
Hamilton, who had the good of woman in her heart, who was better 
imformed on public affairs than perhaps any other woman in the 
United States, and whose trenchant pen cut deep and spared not, 
always reprobated the cause. Mrs. Stowe stood aloof, and so did 
Catherine Beecher, though urged to the contrary course by Henry 
Ward Beecher, and Isabella Beecher Hooker. In a letter to Mrs. 
Cutler, Catherine Beecher said :—“I am not opposed to women’s 
speaking in public to any who are willing to hear, nor am I opposed 
to women’s preaching, sanctioned as it is by a prophetic apostle— 
as one of the millennial results. Nor am I opposed to a woman’s 
earning her own independence in any lawful calling, and wish many 
more were open to her which are now closed. Noram I opposed to 
the organization and agitation of women, as women, to set forth the 
wrongs suffered by great multitudes of our sex, which are multiform 
and most humiliating. Nor am I opposed to women’s undertaking 
to govern boys and men—they always have, and they always will. 
Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights with 
men. I rather claim that they have the sacred superior rights that 
God and good men accord to the weak and defenseless, by which 
they have the easiest work, the most safe and comfortable places, and 
the largest share of all the most agreeable and desirable enjoyments 
of this life. My main objection to the woman-suffrage organization is 
this, that a wrong mode is employed to gain a right object. 

E^iquirer^ Buffalo^ N. K., June 1^97- 





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4 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


It has been claimed by those who advocate Woman 
Suffrage that the right to vote is a natural right, and therefore 
women are as much entitled to it as man. Perhaps we can best 
answer this by giving the views of Herbert Spencer who, 
having made a life-study of Sociology, is entitled to be con¬ 
sidered good authority. He says: “If a man has ■ general 
freedom to pursue the object of life, subject only to the rights 
of other men, if the integrity of his body is no way interferred 
with, if there is no impediment to his locomotion, if his owner¬ 
ship of all that he has earned or acquired is fully, respected, if 
he may give or bequeath as he pleases, occupy himself in what 
way he likes, make a contract or exchange with whomsoever 
he will, hold any opinions and express them in speech or print, 
nothing remains for him to demand under the name of rights 
as properly understood. The giving of a vote in no way 
furthers the voter’s life as does the exercise of these various 
liberties we properly call rights. ’ ’ 

The value and influence of a vote has, we think, been 
very much overrated. In our own country we have seen how 
the will of the majority has been frustrated ; how voting does 
not prevent the corruption of municipal government, does not 
prevent the growth of general and local organizations by which 
each individual is compelled to surrender his power to bosses 
and wire-pullers; does not prevent an enormous majority of 
consumers being taxed for the benefit of a small minority of 
manufacturers and artisans, does not even protect men from 
violent deaths. But small comparatively as the influence of a 
vote is in our opinion, we believe that while the world is subject 
to wars, men, who are physically better able to defend their 
country in its armies, have from that fact a greater right to vote 
than women. To give women the right to vote for a war which 
they are physically incapable of carrying on, seems to us a 
greater wrong than taxation without representation of which 
there is so much complaint. 

When we look at this question as a matter of desirability 
and expediency, it seems to us there can be but one decision. 



As civilization advances there is more and more a tendency 
towards a division of labor, to the giving to each person the 
work he is best fitted to do, and it seems a monstrous absurdity 
to suppose that women are best fitted to make laws and men to 
train children. It has been said, “lyet me make the songs of 
a people and I care not who makes its laws.” In a much truer 
sense it may be said, “Let me train the children of the world 
and I care not who makes its laws.” We believe our country 
needs good wise mothers more than women voters, for we believe 
habits are more powerful than laws. 

Another plea for giving Woman suffrage is that without 
it they cannot obtain legal recognition of their just rights. But 
the facts do not sustain this claim. During the last thirty years 
various disabilities of women have been removed with very little 
resistance from men. ^Comparing the behavior of men to men 
with the behavior of men to women, it is manifest that in 
modern times the sentiment of Justice has been more operative 
in determining the last than the first. Ill treated classes of 
men have had to struggle far longer before they obtained from 
the classes which ill treated them, the concessions they demanded 
than women as a class has had to struggle before obtaining 
from man as a class the various freedoms they asked for. They 
have obtained these without political power and there is no 
reason to doubt that such further injustice as they complain of 
may be similarly remedied without making the great constitu¬ 
tional change some of them seek. In the present condition of 
affairs, women are the friends and co-workers with men; should 
they become voters we fear they would become opponents and 
work against each other. While women are respected and 
treated with so much consideration in our own country that all 
foreigners remark it, they cannot with truth be said to be 
degraded simply because they do not vote. ' To surrender this 
position and enter into political strife seems to me the most 
stupendous folly the world has seen since Esau sold his birth¬ 
right for a mess of potage. It is claimed that the voting of 

*Iii the State of New York it is to be particularly noted that all 
these rights and privileges have been granted women, not at the request 
or solicitation of women, but as a voluntary concession, made by men 
to womanly women in recognition of natural right and justice. 


women will purify the morals of the world, but it must be 
remembered that while women use influence only, a good woman 
is much more powerful, but should they vote a corrupt woman’s 
vote counts for just as much as that of the best and purest of 
women. It is a notorious fact that it is very difficult to get 
the best men of our country interested in public affairs, and it 
will be much more difficult to induce our best women to enter 
the political field. We fear herefore that Woman Suffrage 
would only add another element of corruption to politics. It is 
sometimes stated as an injustice that the ignorant and corrupt 
men are allowed to vote. The remedy for this seems to us to 
be to limit the right of suffrage among men, not to add to it the 
vote of ignorant women also. 

Should it become necessary for a woman to earn her own 
living in the world of business, she will find no law in America 
to prevent her doing whatever she is capable of and we believe 
a women will have a larger measure of success in business 
under the present state of affairs than if she had equal political 
rights. But the crowding of women into the world of business 
has, we think, already produced a disastrous effect in taking 
work from the men and in lowering wages, making it more and 
more difficult for men to marry, who desire to support their 
families themselves as all honorable Americans do. 

Tet us now look for a moment at the women of other 
countries and times. In England the women take an active 
I^art in political affairs. They canvass the country for votes 
from cottage to cottage. In the towns they invade bachelors’ 
apartments, visit the alleys of White Chapel, and the .savages 
of Eambeth, being often insulted and personally abused. Some 
of the best class of women have been struck with eggs, stones 
and dead fish, and in a late election the wife of one of the 
candidates had her eye put out and her sister lost all of her front 
teeth. What seems strangest of all these same English girls 
would not give a man they knew a cup of tea in their own 
drawing-room, unless their mother was present to protect them. 

Perhaps there is no country in the civilized world where 
women have done so much work outside of their homes as in 
France. What has been the result? Says a writer: “The 
First French Revolution presented one of the most striking 


illustrations of the social mischiefs resulting from a neglect of 
the purifying influence of women. Morals, religion, virtue, 
were swamped in sensualism. The character of the w'oman 
became depraved, conjugal fidelity was disregarded, maternity 
was held in reproach, family and home were alike corrupted, 
France was motherless, and the Revolution burst forth amid the 
yells and fierce violence of women.” 

Gibbons tells us that after the Punic triumphs the matrons 
of Rome aspired to the common benefits of a free and opulent 
Republic. “Their wishes were gratified by the indulgence of 
their fathers and lovers, and their ambition was unsuccessfully 
resisted by Cato the Censor. When the Roman matrons became 
the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, a new Juris¬ 
prudence was introduced,—that marriage, like any other partner¬ 
ship might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the associates. 
In three centuries of prosperity and corruption this principle was 
enlarged to frequent practice and pernicious abuse. We believe 
that the agitation and partial success of the movement for female 
suffrage in our own country is having the same result, and as 
we believe that pure well ordered homes are the foundation of 
all good and stable movement, we feel it our duty to resist the 
advance of this government as wives, mothers and lovers of our 
country. We believe the proper work of woman is educational, 
benevolent and in the home. This work has been assigned to 
her, not by men but by God, who has endowed her with the 
qualifications necessary for her position. It is a position that 
will call forth all of her ability, and is an exalted, ennobling 
one. As Thomas Carlyle has so beautifully expressed it, “I 
have never doubted but the true and noble function of a woman 
in this world was, is, and forever will be that of being a wife 
and help-mate to a worthy man, and discharging well the duties 
that devolve upon her in consequence as a mother of children, 
and a mistress of household,—duties high, noble and silently 
important as any that fall to a human being, duties which if 
well discharged constitute woman in a soft, beautiful, almost 
sacred way—The Queen of the World. 

JANE C. HARVEY, 

Tacoma, 


November 29th, 1895. 


Washington. 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 


NOTABLE REVIiRSALS OF OPINION. 


Horace Bushiiell, when assured that the principles of progress 
which he had adopted required him to support woman suffrage, 
reopened the question. After protracted thought, he was forced to 
the conclusion it would be “a reform against nature.” 


John Bright, the patriot, the tried and valued friend of every 
movement for the general benefit of woman, accustomed to equality 
of meeting in Friends’ meetings, spoke against the enfranchisement 
of women in 1876. When charged with having changed his 
opinions, he wrote: ‘T cannot give you all the reasons for the 
view I take, but I act from the belief that to introduce women into 
the strife of political life would be a great evil to them, and that to 
our own sex no possible good could arise. When women are not 
safe under the charge or care of fathers, husbands, brothers and sons, 
it is the fault of our non-civilization and not of our laws. As civili¬ 
zation founded on Christian principles advances, women will gain 
all that is right for them to have, though they are not seen contend¬ 
ing in the strife of political parties. In my experience I have 
observed evil results to many women who have entered heartily into 
political conflict and discussion. I would save them from it. I am, 
Respectfully yours, 

JOHN BRIGHT. 


Upon Bishop John H. Vincent, the founder of Chautauqua, the 
consideration of this subject has naturally been forced. And to it he 
has given years of reflection, carefully following the influence of 
modern general and higher education in society and particular upon 






■ ■!/ 

/ 



the home. In former years he was an advocate of woman suffrage, 
but though enthusiastically devoted to the spread of knowledge, and 
having distributed diplomas to thousands of women who have pur¬ 
sued the extended course of reading of the Chautauqua Literary and 
Scientific Circle, he has been compelled to reverse his attitude. In 
response to a request for a concise statement of the grounds which 
led to the change of his views, he wrote the following letter: 

“When about thirty years of age I accepted for a time the doc¬ 
trine of woman suffrage and publicly advocated it. Years of wide 
and careful observation have convinced me that the demand for 
woman suffrage in America is without foundation in equity, and if 
successful, must prove harmful to American society. I find some 
worthy women defending it, but the majority of our best women, 
especially our most intelligent ones, neither ask for nor desire it. 
The curse of America to-day is a dominated partisian vote, the vote 
of ignorance and superstition. Shall we help matters by doubling 
this dangerous mass ? Free from the weak complications and 
passions of the political arena, the best women may exert a con¬ 
servative and moral influence over men as voters. Woman can 
through the votes of men have every right to which she is entitled. 
All she has man has gladly given her. It is his glory to represent 
her. To rob him of this right is to weaken both. He and she are 
just now in danger from his mistaken courtesy.” 

JOHN H. VINCENT. 



' • • . . 1 . ..ri' -i’ ... 


*^'*. V ‘•-’a>.' ;< .».‘T:s *--i.'*(i''’fUv‘. i-i'j/jj 







WYOMING. 

- 4 - 

PUBLISHED 


BY THE 


Albany Anti-Suffrage Association. 

1895. 


vvYorviiNa. 


As so much has been said by the suffragists regarding Wyoming, and 
its exceptional condition as the star state in the union, I had the curiosity 
to look up Wyoming, and this is what I find from reliable sources. 
Suffrage was granted to women in Wyoming in 1869, and in 1870 the 
United States took a census. In that year, one year after the suffrage had 
been granted to women, the total population of the State of Wyoming was 
9,118, and the number of females of all ages from childhood to old age 
was less than 2,000, and they were scattered over a territory of about 
100,000 square miles, or one female, whether in infancy or old age, to 
every fifty square miles of territory ! What is the condition to-day ? It 
must be remembered that the State of Wyoming is more than twice as 
large as the State of New York, and that the last census report gives 
the total population, inclusive of Indians and cowboys, as 60,000. 

Think of the population ot the city of Troy scattered over more than 
twice the territory of New York State, and you have Wyoming as it stands 
to-day. It seems then, somewhat superfluous to state “that not one 
country of Wyoming has a poor-house.” Four years ago Wyoming was 
admitted as a State. Thirty years ago it was a howling wilderness, with 
no population save the wandering Indians. The settlers were what all 
settlers of a new country are, some from the east and others from Europe, 
many of whom could not speak the English language, and the adventurers 
and tramps that usually flock into a new country. Aged and decrepit 
people are not taken to a new country, so that it is fair to presume that 
the people who settled Wyoming were strong and well as pioneers usually 
are, and to whom the question of existence means to work or starve. 

One would be surprised if in the “twenty-five years of woman- 
suffrage,” or any other condition, there should be need of a poor-house, 
with the vast territory and the small population. The city of Albany has 
100,000 inhabitants. There is only one poor-house for the city and county 
of Albany with a population three times as large as that of the whole State 
of Wyoming, and that is not filled except in very exceptional times. Then 
it is stated that the “jails are almost empty.” Until a few years ago 
prisoners were sent to Joliet, Ill., when lynch-law did not get the start 
of justice. 

Isn’t it nonsense to seriously cite Wyoming with its four years exist¬ 
ence as a State, and its 60,000 inhabitants, as a precedent for New York 
with its nearly three centuries behind its back, and its more than 6,000,000 
inhabitants ? 

The Colorado Springs Gazette of March 12, 1893, says: “Tc any one 
who knows anything of recent Wyoming politics, the statement about 
‘peaceful and orderly elections, good government and a remarkable degree 



statements of all parties, politics in Wyoming are as corrupt as in any State 
in the union. It certainly cannot be held up as a model for other States 
in any respect, and the women who want to vote injure rather than help 
their cause by citing it as an example of what woman’s suffrage will do to 
purify elections and secure good government.” 

A writer in the New York Press, says : “People who have lived in 
Wyoming tell me that gambling is allowed by law, morality is at its lowest 
ebb, and if there have been fewer hangings—legal hangings—it has been 
because lynching is more popular.” 

Mr. Blackwell, editor of the Woman's Journal, and husband of Lucy 
Stone, made an appeal to the republicans implying that women would vote 
for the party who secured them equal rights of suffrage. Let us look at 
Wyoming as an example, as Mr. Blackwell speaks of it as “Republican 
Wyoming, saved to Harrison by the heroic efforts of her women.” What 
are the facts? Not the newspaper partisan statements, but the facts as 
they are recorded. 

In 1890 Wyoming elected a republican governor by a majority of 
1,726 in a total vote of 16,032, and chose a legislature which contained 
thirty-seven republicans and ten democrats. The result of the election 
November, 1892, was the choice of a legislature democratic by twenty-five 
to twenty-four, a democratic governor by a majority of 1,871, and a 
democratic congressman by a majority of 461, while there was a plurality 
of 953 for the Harrison electors. These changes were actually brought 
about by the votes of the women ; and Gen. Thompson, who managed 
the democratic campaign in Wyoming, reported afterward that “the 
women’s vote is the easiest thing in the world to get, and the easiest thing 
to keep, and the easiest thing to manipulate, of any element in politics.” 

Governor Waite of Colorado, who favors woman suffrage for political 
reasons, says : “In Wyoming and Washington, to my knowledge, no 
extraordinary progress has been made in the line of political reform that 
can be traced to female suffrage, and in Colorado sufficient time has not 
elapsed to speak understandingly of the result. Certainly there is little 
hope of the future, unless women, admitted to suffrage, acquaint them-' 
selves more thoroughly than men with political affairs.” 

Governor Crounse of Nebraska says ; “By way of comparison it may 
be remarked that the Nebraska laws relating to the sale of intoxicating 
liquors are far more thorough and far reaching, and are better observed 
than they are in the sister and adjoining State, Wyoming, where woman 
suffrage has obtained for a quarter of a century.” He then quotes from 
the Chicago regarding Wyoming: ‘ ‘At the capital city of the State, 

gambling houses are abundant, and open saloons are as frequent as any 
other kind of stores; and the charge is made that not a single act of legis¬ 
lation aimed at the betterment of the human race has been passed through 
woman’s influence ” Governor Crounse adds, “Nebraska’s sons are 
largely what their mothers have made them ; and what their husbands 
have achieved has been with the advice and support of the wives, whose 
influence is felt in a thousand ways other than in the caucus, the convention 


It would be easy to fill pages with such statements as are given above. 
We give these merely to show that there are two sides to the question of 
whether equal suffrage is a success in Wyoming or not. But the statement 
as to territory and population will be enough in itself to show the utter 
nonsense of citing Wyoming as a precedent for New York. 

MRS. W. WINSLOW CRANNELL. 

Albany, N. Y., May, 1894. 

Officers of the Albany Anti-Suffrage Association. 


Mrs. J. V. L. Pruyn, 

President. 

Mrs. William J. Wallace, 

ist Viee-President. 
Mrs. Wm. B. Van Rensselaer, 
Seeretary. 

Mrs. Joseph Gavit, 

Treasurer. 


To any one of whom requests 


Mrs. W. WiNvSLOW Crannell, 

Chaii'man. 

Mrs. ErAvSTus Corning, 

Mrs. j. Howard King, 

Mrs. Wm. O. Stillman, 

Mrs. William Cassidy, 

Mrs. Joel R. Reed, 

Mrs. P'rederick Townsend, 

Miss Lucy A. Plympton, 

Exeentive Committee. 
leaflets may be sent. 



%. of ^pprctiofion to 

Mrs. Prutjn. 


The Woman’s Association opposed to the extension of 
suffrage to women, of the Third Judicial District of the State 
of Xew York, sincerely appreciating the invaluable services 
of one who for years has been the foremost leader in the cause 
of anti-suffrage, whose enthusiastic energy and rare ability 
have been chiefly responsible for the uniform success and re¬ 
peated achievements of the association in the interest of 
womanhood and the home, desires to express its great indebt¬ 
edness to its honorary president, Mrs. John V. L. Pruyn, of 
Albany. 

Mrs. Pruyn was the president and active leader of the 
association from 1894 to 1900. During that time she was the 
moving spirit in the work, ingeniously planning many aggres¬ 
sive measures that were carried out effectively under her per¬ 
sonal supervision. The results thus achieved had great in¬ 
fluence not only in this State, but also in nearly every other 
State in the Union where the woman suffrage question was 
pending. 

When in 1894 it became necessary for the home-loving 
women of this State to demonstrate to the Constitutional Con¬ 
vention that they resented the efforts of female agitators to 
thrust women into the political arena, it was under Mrs. 
Pruyn’s guidance that our association enrolled over 8,000 
members in a single month. 

Again, Avhen it became apparent that the woman suffrag¬ 
ists would besiege the Republican National Convention at St. 
Louis in June, 1896, to obtain a declaration favorable to 
female suffrage in the party platform, it was Mrs. Pruyn’s 



idea to discount the suffragists by sending to the convention a 
representative of the anti-suffrage association to protest. 

The protest was heeded. It was as one of the leading 
suffragists present at the convention said: protest more 

forceful than the protest of a thousand men; ’’ and continued, 
it will require years to regain the lost ground.^’ 

The plan of the suffragists being frustrated at St. Louis, 
where the Eepublican party refused to give the desired recog¬ 
nition, the suffragists, a few weeks later, went to the Demo¬ 
cratic J^ational Convention in Chicago to urge the adoption 
of a woman suffrage plank for the Democratic platform. But 
it was again due to Mrs. Pruyn’s forethought that a represen¬ 
tative of the anti-suffragists was present to protest. 

The result of this opposition was electric. Immediately 
the attention of the press was attracted, and the fact was 
heralded throughout the land that an effective organization 
had been perfected among women opposed to the extension of 
suffrage. Thus women in many Slates were roused to join 
the movement, and the cause of anti-woman suffrage became a 
matter of national concern. 

It was Mrs. Pruyn’s thought and her determination that 
sent a representative to the far w'estern States of South 
Dakota and Washington to assist the women there in defeat¬ 
ing woman suffrage amendments. 

It has been due to Mrs. Pruyn’s never-failing watchful¬ 
ness that woman suffrage bills in State legislatures throughout 
the Union have been discovered and obstructed year after 
year. She has turned the searchlight of publicity upon them, 
and by distributing thousands of leaflets and sending hun¬ 
dreds of personal letters has awakened both men and women 
to a full knowledge of the many objections to such legislation. 
During this campaign of education there were nearly 100 
suffrage defeats in about two-thirds of the States of the 
Union. ^N’o doubt the literature sent out by Mrs. Pruyn had 
much to do with the results. 

'Ko one save those who have been in actual touch with the 
work will ever know how great and how wide-spread has been 


her influence. She has been the most potent and vigorous 
apostle the anti-suflrage cause has ever had, and her enforced 
withdrawal from active work by order of her physician is a 
great lost to the anti-suflrage movement. Being' devoted to 
the cause from a high sense of her duty to womanhood, she 
has not only contributed her time and her best thought to the 
work, but also has given the principal financial support to the 
association, using her own private means in a hundred difler- 
-ent ways for the advancement of the work. 

The members of the association, who have had the honor 
and pleasure of working under Mrs. Pruyn as leader, desire 
to give this testimony in recognition of her invaluable serv¬ 
ices to the cause; and to add an expression of keen regret that 
ill-health makes it necessary for her to sever her active connec¬ 
tion with the association. 


Mrs. William J. Wallace^ 

President pro. tern. 
Mrs. William Bayard Van Rensselaer, 

Secretary. 


Mrs. elosEPH Gavit, 

Treasurer. 

Mrs. W. Winslow Crannell, 

Chairman Executive Committee. 
Mrs. William Cassidy, 

Mrs. J. Howard King, 

Miss Lucy A. Plympton, 

Mrs. Joel R. Reed, 

Mrs. Frederick Townsend, 

Mrs. William O. Stillman, 

Executive Committee. 


Albany, K. Y., April, 1901. 


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